After President Franklin Roosevelt’s inauguration on March 4
Herbert Hoover went to his suite at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in
New York City to rest, and then his wife Lou
headed for their home at Palo Alto, California.
On March 6 Hoover issued a brief statement urging people to cooperate
with President Roosevelt’s bank holiday without expressing his doubts.
The next day he transferred investments from bonds to stocks
to take advantage of Roosevelt’s currency inflation.
He donated his Rapidan fishing camp to the
Federal Government for use by Presidents.
On March 16 Hoover and his son Allan left New York to join Lou at Palo Alto.
There he collected critical papers on the World War.
He worked with the Boys Club of America, the American Child Health Association
the American Children’s Relief Association
the Belgian-American Educational Foundation, Stanford University,
Huntington Library, Mills College, Carnegie Institute, and other committees.
He read thirty daily newspapers that he had airmailed to Palo Alto.
He felt relieved that he was no longer working
12 to 14 hours a day seven days a week.
He hired a team of secretaries to answer the 20,000 friendly letters he received.
Joining the board of the New York Life Insurance Company
gave him some extra income.
On June 26 he wrote to Henry Stimson,
My hunch is that after making a long series of specious
yet impossible proposals on disarmament and economics,
and securing the necessary refusals from Europe,
that we will have laid the foundation
for a plunge into a period of wild nationalism.
That has, in my view, been
the intention from the beginning.—
Economic war with still higher tariffs,
depreciated currencies, quotas, embargoes,
militaristic appeals with bigger navies, etc., etc.
It is the natural fruit of demagoguery
both at home and abroad.
However the sun still shines and the rich get richer
and the thrifty, saving back-bone of the country
will get poorer.1
In the introduction to the third volume of his Memoirs
Hoover summarized the history of the “Great Depression” this way:
To be sure, we were due for some economic
readjustment as a result of the orgy
of stock speculation in 1928-1929.
This orgy was not a consequence
of my administrative policies.
In the main it was the result of the Federal Reserve Board’s
pre-1928 enormous inflation of credit at the request
of European bankers which, as this narrative shows,
I persistently tried to stop, but I was overruled.
Aside from the inevitable collapse of this Mississippi Bubble,
some secondary economic forces
also contributed to the October, 1929, events.
But even this slump started in foreign countries
before it occurred in the United States,
and their difficulties were themselves
a contributing factor to the stock market crack.
Our domestic difficulties standing alone
would have produced no more than
the usual type of economic readjustment
which had re-occurred at intervals in our history.
Eighteen months later, by early 1931,
we were convalescing from our own ills
when an economic hurricane struck us from abroad.
The whole financial and economic structure of Europe
collapsed at this time as a result of
the delayed consequences of the First World War,
the Versailles Treaty, and internal policies.
The immediate effect of Central Europe’s collapse
was the terrible unsettlement of all
economically sensitive nations everywhere.
Among the dire consequences were Britain’s
suspension of payments to foreigners,
abandonment of the gold standard by scores of nations,
trade wars, political revolutions
in more than a dozen countries outside of Europe,
and disaster for the American economy.
The eventual effect of this gigantic catastrophe
was to kindle political and social revolutions
in all the defeated nations of Central and Eastern Europe.
Communism reached its dread hand into those areas,
and Fascist dictators arose as the antidote.
In the end, these forces were to plunge the world
into a Second World War….
Whatever our apprehensions may have been,
it can be said at once that
neither the American people nor the Congress
would have approved such unprecedented measures
before these ill winds began to strike our shores.
It is not given to mortals clearly to foresee the violence
or the emergence of hidden forces of destruction.
As a measure of proof of public
and Congressional unconcern, I may recall that
I had repeatedly, yet without success,
urged the reorganization of our whole banking system
during the two years before the European storm
revealed that weakness to our people.
General Prosperity had been a great ally
in my election in 1928.
General Depression, who superseded,
was in some part responsible for my defeat in 1932.
The recovery which began in July steadily increased
over that summer, but not sufficiently
to overcome that particular political opponent….
That our administration policies were right
is amply evidenced by the fact that
after the world turned toward recovery in July, 1932,
the twelve nations retaining their free economies,
and pursuing our policies, fully recovered,
within two or three years,
to levels above the boom year of 1929.2
In 1934 Hoover began spending most of his time in his suite of rooms
at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York City.
His first book criticizing Roosevelt’s New Deal was
The Challenge to Liberty which was published on 28 September 1934.
In the Introduction he wrote,
For the first time in two generations the American people
are faced with the primary issue of humanity
and all government—the issue of human liberty.
Not only in the United States, but throughout the world,
the whole philosophy of individual liberty is under attack.
In haste to bring under control
the sweeping social forces unleashed by
the political and economic dislocations of the World War,
by the tremendous advances in productive technology
during the last quarter-century,
by the failure to march with a growing sense of justice,
peoples and governments are blindly wounding,
even destroying those fundamental human liberties
which have been the foundation
and the inspiration of progress since the Middle Ages.
The great question before the American people is
not whether these dislocations and abuses can be mastered
and these new and powerful forces organized
and directed to human welfare,
whether they can be organized by free men.
We have to determine now whether,
under the pressures of the hour,
we must cripple or abandon the heritage of liberty for some
new philosophy which must mark the passing of freedom.
Who may define Liberty?
It is far more than Independence of a nation.
It is not a catalogue of political “rights.”
Liberty is a thing of the spirit—to be free to worship,
to think, to hold opinions, and to speak without fear—
free to challenge wrong and oppression
with surety of justice.
Liberty conceives that the mind and spirit of men can be
free only if the individual is free to choose his own calling,
to develop his talents, to win and to keep a home
sacred from intrusion, to rear children in ordered security.
It holds he must be free to earn, to spend, to save,
to accumulate property that
may give protection in old age and to loved ones….
The high tenet of this philosophy is that Liberty
is an endowment from the Creator
of every individual man and woman upon which no power,
whether economic or political, can encroach,
and that not even the government may deny.
And herein it challenges all other philosophies
of society and government; for all others,
both before and since, insist that
the individual has no such unalienable rights,
that he is but the servant of the state.
Liberalism holds that man is master of the state,
not the servant; that the sole purpose of government
is to nurture and assure these liberties….
Out of our philosophy grew
the American Constitutional system
where the obligation to promote the common welfare
was mandatory and could be made effective;
wherein was embodied in its very framework
the denial of the right of the government itself
or of any group, any business, or any class
to infringe upon essential liberties;
wherein the majority was to rule;
wherein government was to be “of laws and not of men;”
whereby the individual was guaranteed
the just protection of these rights by its tribunals—
the structure of American Democracy.3
He criticized what he called the “collectivism”
that could lead to “bureaucratic tyranny.”
He explained,
We cannot extend the mastery of government
over the daily life of a people without somewhere
making it master of people’s soul and thoughts.
That is going on today.
It is part of all regimentation.
Even if the government conduct of business could give us
the maximum of efficiency instead of least efficiency,
it would be purchased at the cost of freedom.
It would increase rather than decrease
abuse and corruption, stifle initiative and invention,
undermine the development of leadership,
cripple the mental and spiritual energies of our people,
extinguish equality of opportunity,
and dry up the spirit of liberty
and the forces which make progress.
It is a false Liberalism that
interprets itself into government dictation,
or operation of commerce, industry and agriculture.
Every move in that direction
poisons the very springs of true Liberalism.
It poisons political equality, free thought,
free press, and equality of opportunity.
It is the road not to liberty but to less liberty.
True Liberalism is found
not in striving to spread bureaucracy,
but in striving to set bounds to it.
Liberalism is a force proceeding from the deep realization
that economic freedom cannot be sacrificed
if political freedom is to be preserved.
True Liberalism seeks all legitimate freedom first
in the confident belief that without such freedom
the pursuit of other blessings is in vain.4
In the 1934 elections the Democrats gained 9 seats in the Senate
and 9 more in the House of Representatives.
Frank Kent was a leading Democratic journalist
who began criticizing the New Deal in 1934.
In his column in the Baltimore Sun on 12 November 1944
he reviewed the history of the American depression.
He noted that President Franklin Roosevelt had
often used the word “falsifications,” and Kent wrote,
The fact is that the biggest falsification
of the whole campaign emanated from his own side, and
it had its origin back in the early days of his first campaign.
It consisted of the charge that the depression of 1930-32
was caused by the Republican party;
that the Republicans did nothing about it;
that the people were allowed to starve
and were forced to sell apples;
that the country was in ruins
and that Mr. Roosevelt rescued it from the complete wreck.
So successful was the smear campaign
between 1930 and 1932 that these allegations
became deeply impressed upon
a vast number of unthinking and uninformed people.
They were promulgated in a thousand speeches,
in millions of scurrilous pamphlets and circulars.
They became a fundamental New Deal conviction.
Mr. Roosevelt himself has given currency to them
and has often referred to apple selling….
The broader facts, which history will record,
are that the depression was world-wide;
that its major origins were in Europe;
that it swept in on the United States like a hurricane;
that it originated from the backwash of World War I;
that by action of the Republican Administration
18,000,000 people were under organized relief;
that no one starved and that the Hoover Administration
took drastic steps to protect people’s savings
by creating the RFC and the Home Land Banks
and by expanding agricultural credit institutions.
The bank failures were mostly in State banks
not under Federal control.
It is likely, too, that history will record that
in June and July of 1932 we were on our way out
of the depression, with employment increasing,
but that recovery was halted when business confidence
was shaken by the impending election of the New Deal;
that with the election, the whole country further hesitated,
awaiting the new policies;
that rumors quickly spread that Mr. Roosevelt
would devalue the currency; that, in consequence,
people tried to get their money out of the banks
and that speculators tried to ship it out of the country;
that Mr. Roosevelt refused Mr. Hoover’s request
to reaffirm the promise he had made
the night before election not to tinker with the currency;
that Mr. Roosevelt refused to cooperate
in other directions with Mr. Hoover;
that the closing of the banks was not from fear
of a retiring administration and could have been averted
had Mr. Roosevelt been willing to cooperate.
Those are the facts.
After the banks were reopened, it was found that
98 percent of their deposits were good.
Further, the historical truth is that the rest of the world,
not having a “New Deal,” went straight out of the depression
and recovered its employment by 1934 or 1935;
that unemployment here in the United States
continued on a large scale for six years
and that Governor Dewey told the exact truth
when he said it took a war to get us out of it.
The whole story of the 1930-1932 depression as painted
by the New Deal publicity agencies beginning in 1932
and continuing straight through the last campaign
is about as big and complete a falsification
as has been known in American politics.
It shows what can be done by large-scale,
skillful and unscrupulous publicity.
It is the classic example of what can be done
by distortion and suppression of facts.
It probably has deceived more people
than any other piece of political fiction in fifty years.5
On 22 March 1935 Hoover made a speech in
Sacramento on a national broadcast.
He said,
The Republican Party today has the greatest responsibility
that has come to it since the days of Abraham Lincoln.
That responsibility is to raise the standard
in defense of fundamental American principles.
It must furnish the rallying point for all those
who believe in these principles and are determined
to defeat those who are responsible for their daily jeopardy.
I. The American people have directly before them
the issue of maintaining and perfecting our system
of orderly individual liberty
under constitutionally conducted government,
or of rejecting it in favor of the newly created system
of regimentation and bureaucratic domination in which
men and women are not masters of government
but are the pawns or dependents of a centralized
and potentially self-perpetuating government.
That is, shall we as a nation stand on the foundations
of Americanism, gaining the great powers of progress
inherent in it, correcting abuses which arise within it,
widening the security and opportunities
that can alone be built upon it
Before us is the sink into which
first one great nation after another abroad is falling.
America must look today, as in the past,
to the creative impulses of free men and women,
born of the most enterprising and self-reliant stock
in the world, for productive genius,
for expansion of enterprise, for economic recovery,
for restoration of normal jobs,
for increased standards of living,
for reform of abuse of governmental or economic powers,
and for advance from outworn modes of thought.
The freedom of men to think, to act, to achieve,
is now being hampered.
2. The American people have a right to determine
for themselves this fundamental issue,
and it is solely through the Republican Party that
it can be presented for determination at the ballot box.
To accomplish this the country is in need
of a rejuvenated and vigorous Republican organization.
That rebirth of the Republican Party transcends
any personal interest or the selfish interest of any group.
That organization will be the stronger if,
like your own sessions, it springs
from the people who believe in these principles.
3. It is well that the young men and women
of the Republican Party should meet and give attention
to this drift from national moorings.
Some of the concrete results of these policies
are already apparent.
The most solemn government obligations
have been repudiated.
The nation is faced with the greatest debt
ever known to our country.
The currency has been rendered uncertain.
The government has been centralized under
an enormous bureaucracy in Washington which has dictated
and limited the production of our industries,
increasing the costs and prices of their products
with inevitable decreased consumption.
Monopolistic practices have been organized
on a gigantic scale.
Small business men have been disabled and crushed.
Class conflicts have been created and embittered.
The government has gone into business
in competition with its citizens.
Citizens have been coerced, threatened and penalized
for offenses unknown to all our concepts of liberty.
The courts are proclaiming
repeated violations of the Constitution.
Because of food destruction and restraint
on farm production, foreign food is pouring into our ports,
purchase of which should have been made
from our farmers.
The cost of living is steadily advancing.
More people are dependent upon the government
for relief than ever before.
Recovery is still delayed.
The productive genius of our people, which is the sole road
to recovery and to increased standards of living,
is being stifled, the nation impoverished instead of enriched.
The theories of this Administration do not work.
They are no longer a propagandized millennium;
they are self-exposed.
4. The people have a right to an opportunity
to change these policies.
It is the duty of the Republican Party
to offer that opportunity.
And beyond insistence upon American foundations
of government, it is the duty of the Party to insist upon
realistic methods of recovery,
real jobs for labor and real markets for the farmer.
Those methods lie in removing the shackles
and uncertainties from enterprise.
After nearly six years of depression, liquidation,
restriction of all manner of purchases and improvements,
we stand on the threshold of a great forward,
economic movement, if only the paralyzing effects
of mistaken governmental policies and activities
may be removed.
The present conception of a national economy
based upon scarcity must in all common sense be reversed
to an economy based upon production,
or workman, farmer, and business man alike are defeated.
Surely economic life advances only through increasing
production by use of every instrument science gave to us,
through lowering of costs and prices
with consequent increase in consumption,
and through higher real wages to the worker
and real return to the farmer.
Effective reform of abuses in business and finance
must be undertaken through regulation and not
through bureaucratic dictation or government operation.
Protection to individual enterprise from monopolies must be
re-established whereby the smaller businesses may live.
Stifling uncertainties of currency manipulation
must be removed.
Government expenditures which, if continued
on the present scale, can create only bankruptcy
or calamitous inflation, must be curtailed.
The effective participation of the States
and local governments in relief under nonpartisan
administrators must be reestablished so that waste,
extravagance, and politics may be eliminated
and the people better served.
Great social problems of better safeguards to the individual
against the dislocations of advancing industry,
national calamity and old age must be discovered.
But these problems of business, agriculture, and labor
become much easier
with a restoration of economic common sense.
Indeed, a score of economic and social questions
must be solved, and in their answers are locked
the real advancement of life and the attainment of security
and contentment in the American home—
for that is the ultimate expression of American life.
But their solution will not be found
in violation of the foundations of human liberty.
5. It is well that we pause a moment to examine
what objectives we wish to secure from the vast complex
of invisible governmental, economic and social forces
which dominate our civilization.
The objective of American life must be to build up
and protect the family and the home,
whether farmer, worker, or business man.
That is the unit of American life.
It is the moral and spiritual as well as the economic unit.
With its independence and security
come the spiritual blessings of the nation.
The fundamental protection of these homes is the spirit
as well as the letter of the Bill of Rights,
with the supports from the framework of the Constitution.
They must be given peace with the world.
There must be confidence in the security of the job,
of the business, of the savings which sustain these homes.
Increased standards of living, leisure, and security
can come to that home through unshackling
the productive genius of our people.
The advancement of knowledge must be translated
into increasing health and education for the children.
There must be constantly improved safeguards to the family
from the dislocations of economic life and of old age.
With the growth of great industrial forces we must continue
to add unceasing protections from abuse and exploitation.
We must be liberal in reward to those who add service,
material or spiritual wealth to these homes.
Those deserve no reward who does not contribute
or who gain from exploitation of them.
The windows of these homes must be bright with hope.
Their doors must be open outward to initiative, enterprise,
opportunity, unbounded by regimentation and socialism.
Today there must be restoration of faith,
the removal of fear and uncertainty that these ideals
and these hopes will be open to those who strive.
To the young men and women it is vital
that their opportunity in life shall be preserved;
that the frontiers of initiative and enterprise
shall not be closed, that their future
shall not be burdened by unbearable debt for our follies,
that their lives and opportunities shall not be circumscribed
and limited, that they shall have the right
to make their homes and careers
and achieve their own position in the world.
There are a host of problems to solve
if we attain these ideals, but again I repeat that
the first condition in their solution is orderly individual liberty
and responsible constitutional government
as opposed to un-American regimentation
and bureaucratic domination.6
On May 15 at Palo Alto the press asked Hoover about the
National Recovery Administration (NRA) that was currently before the Congress.
This was his response:
In reply to your question, the one right answer
by the House of Representatives to the Senate’s action
extending the life of the NRA is to abolish it entirely.
Present NRA proposals are as bad,
many ways, as the original.
With its continuation until the next Congress
and with Federal agents putting pressure
on State legislatures to get them to enact State laws
in support of NRA, it is evident that
there has been no real retreat.
This whole idea of ruling business through code authorities
with delegated powers of law is un-American in principle
and a proved failure in practice.
The codes are retarding recovery.
They are a cloak for conspiracy against the public interest.
They are and will continue to be a weapon of bureaucracy,
a device for intimidation of decent citizens.
To the customary answer of “destructive criticism”
or the other question “what substitute is offered?”
I suggest that the only substitute for an action that rests
on definite and proved economic error is to abandon it.
We do not construct new buildings on false foundations, and
we cannot build a Nation’s economy on a fundamental error.
The beneficent objectives of a greater social justice
and the prevention of sweating, child labor and abuse
in business practices should be and can be
better attained by specific statutory law.
There are already sufficient agencies of government
for enforcement of the laws of the land.
Where necessary those laws should be strengthened,
but not replaced with personal government.
The prevention of waste in mineral resources
should be carried out by the States
operating under federally encouraged interstate compacts.
That is an American method of eradicating economic abuses
and wastes, as distinguished from Fascist regimentation.
The multitude of code administrators, agents
or committees has spread into every hamlet,
and, whether authorized or not, they have engaged in
the coercion and intimidation of presumably free citizens.
People have been sent to jail,
but far more have been threatened with jail.
Direct and indirect boycotts have been organized
by the bureaucracy itself.
Many are being used today.
Claiming to cure immoral business practices,
the codes have increased them
a thousand fold through “chiseling.”
They have not protected legitimate business
from unfair competition, but they have deprived the public
of the benefits of fair competition.
This whole NRA scheme has saddled the American people
with the worst era of monopolies we have ever experienced.
However monopoly is denned, its objective is to fix prices
or to limit production or to stifle competition.
Any one of those evils produces the other two,
and it is no remedy to take part of them out.
These have been the very aim of certain business elements
ever since Queen Elizabeth.
Most of the 700 NRA codes affect those very purposes.
Exactly such schemes to avoid competition in business
were rejected by my Administration
because they are born from a desire
to escape the anti-trust laws.
If the anti-trust laws had not been effective in a major way,
there would have been no such desire to escape them.
If they do not meet modern conditions,
they should be openly amended or circumvented.
My investigations over the country show that the codes
have increased costs of production and distribution,
and therefore prices.
Thus they have driven toward decreased consumption
and increased unemployment.
They have increased the cost of living
and placed a heavier burden on the American farmer.
NRA codes have been crushing the life out of small business,
and they are crushing the life out of the very heart
of the local community body.
There are 1,500,000 small businesses in this country,
and our purpose should be to protect them.
The codes are preventing new enterprises.
In this they deprive America’s youth of the opportunity
and the liberty to start and build their independence,
and thus stop the men and women of tomorrow
from building soundly toward a true social security.
Publishers have had to resist arduously the encroachment
of these NRA codes upon such fundamental, constitutionally
guaranteed American liberties as free speech.
The whole concept of NRA
is rooted in a regimented “economy of scarcity”—
an idea that increased costs, restricted production
and hampered enterprise will enrich a Nation.
That notion may enrich a few individuals
and help a few businesses,
but it will impoverish the nation and undermine
the principles of real social justice
upon which this Nation was founded.
If the NRA has increased employment, it is not apparent.
If we subtract the persons temporarily employed
by the coded industries as the direct result
of the enormous Government expenditures,
we find that the numbers being employed
are not materially greater than when it was enacted.
NRA’s pretended promises to labor were intentionally vague
and have never been clarified.
They have only promoted conflict
without establishing real rights.
That original ballyhoo used to hypnotize and coerce
the people into acquiescence is now gone.
Most of the originally grandiose schemes
now are conceded to be a violation
of the spirit and the letter of the American Constitution.
Some business interests already have established
advantages out of the codes,
and therefore seek the perpetuation of NRA.
Even these interests should recognize that
in the end they themselves will become either
the pawns of a bureaucracy that they do not want
or the instruments of a bureaucracy
the American people do not want.7
On May 27 the US Supreme Court ruling on
A.L.A. Schechter Poultry Corp. v. United States declared the
National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA) of 1933 unconstitutional.
The NRA was a part of the NIRA.
On June 16 Hoover in a long national broadcast of his
Commencement Address at Stanford University included these comments:
Some years ago I marched up, as you do,
to receive the diploma of this University.
Like some of you here present, my occasion was somewhat
distracted by the sinking realization of a shortage of cash
working capital and the necessity to find an immediate job.
Put into economic terms, I was earnestly wishing
some person with a profit motive would allow me
to try to earn him a profit.
At the risk of seeming counterrevolutionary
or as a defender of evil, I am going to suggest
that basis of test for a job has some advantages….
There has indeed been great change
in our American world since that time.
Our huge surge forward in the conquests of science
and of mechanical power has brought new visions
and a new vista of further advance in social justice
and the general welfare among our people.
As we have nearly doubled in numbers,
we jostle our elbows more.
We must have more rules of the road.
In the midst of this changing scene there has been injected
the inflation and destruction of the greatest war of history.
Its shivering instabilities still remain with us.
Surplus production is pitted against mass poverty.
Under these pressures every weakness of the system
has come to the surface.
The wounds of war are made to appear
as the result of organic disease of the system.
New systems of life are urged as a cure for all human ills.
Our economic and governmental system is
slow to adjust itself to these changes and aspirations.
There is great confusion of thought and ideals.
Such periods of confused thought
are not new in the world.
You will find an uncanny parallel in England
during the period following the Napoleonic Wars.
They had also seen a great stride in productivity
from the early installation of the factory system,
the steam engine, the expansion of world trade.
The Napoleonic Wars added to this
all the false prosperities of inflation.
Then with the inevitable depression they too faced
the most acute agricultural distress and unemployment.
Agriculture and industry remained
out of balance for a score of years.
Hectic periods of partial recovery in the cities
were followed by outbursts of mad speculation and greed.
Economic wounds were painful then as now.
They too tried some of the sedatives
which we have recently embraced.
It was a period seething with contention.
Their very expressions have a modern ring.
But to the discerning student of that period
there emerged one outstanding result of lasting importance.
Out of that seething of misery and that violent movement
of social and economic forces there came gradually
a great clarification of thought
and stronger foundations of social growth.
Our standards of life have immensely increased
since Napoleonic times.
Then the Englishman had less than 100 mechanical
horsepower at his command for each thousand adults.
Today we command 6,000 mechanical horsepower
for each thousand adults.
And this does not include the private automobiles.
At that period a skilled mechanic
with his whole week’s wages could purchase
less than 200 pounds of the fixings
from which bread and butter are made.
Today he can purchase 500 pounds, if he were disposed
to take all his week’s wages in that form.
At that time I doubt that 5 per cent of the population
enjoyed what we would today call
a reasonable standard of living.
In our times over eighty per cent of our people
have enjoyed such standards.
That was when our economic machine
was working on all eight cylinders.
Faith in its wider spread was universal.
When prosperity was suddenly dimmed,
faith was turned to fear.
Men today naturally feel all the impulses of distress.
Confusion of thought is inevitable.
But we should be of greater faith.
The new surge forward in our productivity
of this last generation has for the first time in history
given us the possibility and the vision that
we can raise our whole people to higher standards of living.
Capacity to produce a plenty
is one of the triumphs of American civilization.
It creates the real basis of hope of economic security
for all the people who will work.
We want to be secure against unemployment,
old age, and misfortune,
so that fear of poverty will be driven from among us.
And social security demands more than economic security.
It would have health, education,
and strengthening of character,
the time and opportunity for recreation
and the cultivation of the most desirable things of life.8
He went on to discuss many aspects of social security, and these included
freedom, capacity to produce goods, self-government, distribution of
productivity, property ownership, education, and health.
On Constitution Day (September 17) Hoover spoke briefly
at a symposium in San Diego on the Bill of Rights.
On October 5 he gave a nationally broadcast address to the
California Republican Assembly in Oakland, California criticizing
the New Deal’s deficit spending and administrative methods.
On November 16 he spoke in a similar broadcast from New York.
In a national broadcast from St. Louis on December 16 he focused
on the bank panic in March 1933 and on Roosevelt’s financial policies.
On 16 January 1936 Hoover spoke from Lincoln, Nebraska
on New Deal agriculture policies and collectivism.
In a broadcast from Portland, Oregon on February 12 he replied
to a speech that President Roosevelt had made in January.
He challenged the “undermining of local government by centralization
at Washington, the spoils system, the reduction of Congress
to a rubber stamp, these monetary policies.”9
He noted that Roosevelt had quoted the philosopher Josiah Royce.
Hoover responded with this quote by Royce:
“The present tendency to the centralization of power in our
national government seems to me, then, a distinct danger.
It is a substitution of power for loyalty.”
On May 14 Hoover gave a speech to an organization of women
in Philadelphia hoping to influence the Republican platform.
At the Republican National Convention at Cleveland in 1936
Herbert Hoover made a speech on June 10
that George H. Nash edited to this:
I have given about four years to research
into the New Deal, trying to determine
what sort of a system it is imposing on this country.
To some people it appears to be a strange interlude
in American history in that it has no philosophy,
that it is sheer opportunism, that it is a muddle
of a spoils system, of emotional economics,
of reckless adventure, of unctuous claims to a monopoly
of human sympathy, of greed for power,
of a desire for popular acclaim and an aspiration
to make the front pages of the newspapers.
That is the most charitable view.
To other people it appears to be a cold-blooded attempt
by starry-eyed boys to infect the American people
by a mixture of European ideas, flavored with
our native predilection to get something for nothing.
You can choose either one you like best.
But the first is the road of chaos which leads to the second.
Both of these roads lead over the same grim precipice
that is the crippling and possibly
the destruction of the freedom of men….
We have seen repeated violation
of morals and honor in government.
Do I need recall the repudiation of obligations,
the clipping of the coin, the violation of trust
to guard the Constitution and the coercion of the voter?
When the standards of honor and morals
fail in government, they fail in the people.
There are some moral laws written in a Great Book.
Over all there is the gospel of brotherhood.
For the first time in the history of America we have heard
the gospel of class hatred preached from the White House.
That is human poison far more deadly than fear.
Every reader of the history of democracy knows
that is the final rock upon which
all democracies have been wrecked….
The New Deal has brought that which George Washington
called “alterations which may impair the energy
of the system and thus overthrow
that which cannot be directly overthrown.”
Republicans! After a hundred and fifty years,
we have arrived at that hour.
The New Deal may be a revolutionary design to replace
the American System with despotism.
It may be the dream stuff of a false liberalism.
It may be the valor of muddle.
Their relationship to each other, however, is exactly
the sisterhood of the witches who brewed
the cauldron of powerful trouble for Macbeth.
Their product is the poisoning of Americanism….
The Republican Party must be a party
which accepts the challenge of each new day.
The last word in human accomplishment
has not been spoken.
The last step in human progress has not been made.
We welcome change when it will produce
a fairer, more just, and satisfying civilization.
But change which destroys the safeguards
of free men and women is only apples of Sodom….
Design of the structure of betterment can only be builded
by using the mold of justice, by laying brick upon brick
from the materials of scientific research;
by the painstaking sifting of truth
from the collection of fact and experience.
Any other mold is distorted;
any other bricks are without straw;
any other foundations are sand.
That great structure of human progress
can be built only by free men and women….
Does this issue not transcend all other issues?
Is it not alone the ground of Republican unity
but unity beyond all partisanship?
There are principles which neither tricks of organization,
nor the rigors of depression, nor the march of time,
nor New Dealers, nor Socialists, nor Fascists can change.
There are some principles which came into the universe
along with the shooting stars of which worlds are made,
and they have always been and ever will be true.
Such are laws of mathematics, the law of gravitation,
the existence of God,
and the ceaseless struggle of humankind to be free….
For this the best and bravest of earth
have fought and died.
To embody human liberty in workable government,
America was born.
Shall we keep that faith?
Must we condemn the unborn generations
to fight again and to die for the right to be free?...
Less than twenty years ago we accepted those ideals
as the air we breathed.
We fought a great war for their protection….
We buried our sons in foreign soil.
But in this score of years we have seen the advance
of collectivism and its inevitable tyranny
in more than half the civilized world.
In this thundering era of world crisis
distracted America stands confused and uncertain.
The Whig Party temporized, compromised
upon the issue of slavery for the black man.
That party disappeared.
It deserved to disappear.
Shall the Republican Party deserve or receive
any better fate if it compromises upon
the issue of freedom for all men, white as well as black?...
There’s something vastly bigger than payrolls,
than economics, than materialism, at issue in this campaign.
The free spirit of men is the source of self-respect,
of sturdiness, of moral and spiritual progress….
Nations die when these weaken,
no matter what their material prosperity.
Fundamental American liberties are at stake.
Is the Republican Party ready for the issue?
Are you willing to cast your all upon the issue,
or would you falter and look back?
Will you, for expediency’s sake, also offer will-o’-the-wisps
which beguile the people?
Or have you determined to enter in a holy crusade
for liberty which shall determine the future
and the perpetuity of a nation of free men?
That star shell fired today over the no man’s land
of world despair would illuminate the world with hope….
This is your call.
Stop the retreat.
In the chaos of doubt, confusion, and fear,
yours is the task to command turning the eyes
of your fellow Americans to the sunlight of freedom,
lead the attack to retake, recapture,
and re-man the citadels of liberty….
Thus can the opportunity, the inheritance,
and the spiritual future of your children be guaranteed.
And thus you will win the gratitude of posterity,
and the blessing of Almighty God.10
Eventually he gave up his ambition to run for President in 1936.
That year the Republicans nominated Governor Alfred E. Landon of Kansas,
and President Roosevelt defeated him easily.
On September 23 Hoover spoke on “Reform in the Administration of Relief”
to the Women’s Conference on Current Problems in New York City.
He said,
As a nation we must prevent hunger and cold
to those of our people who are in honest difficulties.
That primary duty still holds.
Relief must go on so long as there is need for it.
There are two parts to this responsibility.
The first and transcendent one is the humane obligation
to our fellow men and women in distress.
This implies not alone the provision of a living
but it implies organizing that individual helpfulness
which gives hope, courage and self-respect.
The other responsibility is to execute this task
without waste, for other human beings
must toil and make sacrifice to provide relief….
One of the crowning glories of American life
is the natural leadership in every community.
That is the product of a democracy
which in its very functioning
is based upon voluntary action and co-operation.
In every community there are from a dozen to a thousand
men and women who have greater abilities
than any bureaucracy.
They have devotion and willingness
to render such public service….
From 1933, that organization was replaced
or reduced to a facade by Federal centralization.
We have now had time to measure
the relative merits of the two methods.
That is, of decentralized local administration
in the hands of leading citizens
or Federal centralization
under politically selected bureaucracy….
The 1932 abnormal Federal, State, and local expenditures
for unemployment relief and Federal public works
totaled about $1,100,000,000.
It is true that local resources were diminishing.
Increases in Federal grants-in-aid were inevitable.
But the cost of the various present branches of relief
is now somewhere near $3,500,000,000 yearly….
There is a spiritual loss in all this
which cannot be estimated.
Instead of building up the solicitude
of neighbor for neighbor, instead of building the
responsibility of good neighbors among men and women,
we are cultivating hardness for the destitute;
we are undermining self-respect of men and women.
We are creating contempt for government.
One need of the nation today
is a recall of a spirit of individual service.
That spirit springs from the human heart, not from politics.
Upon that spirit alone can this democracy survive.
No greater call to service could be made
than to remobilize local administration of relief.11
On 30 September 1936 Hoover spoke on
reforming federal taxes in Denver saying,
My administration having more than doubled
the upper brackets of the income tax and the estate taxes
up to 55 per cent, no one will accuse me of wanting
to give relief from the burden of government
to those classes of the destitute….
First, that if you will expand or improve
your equipment and production we will give you
a reasonable exemption from corporation taxes
on all the profits you expend that way.
And I mean every form of corporation taxes,
including the so-called normal tax on profits.
But this exemption should be limited
to the amount of profits plowed in for the purpose.
As a matter of fact, it would make more jobs
than all the boondoggling of the nation—
and they would be honest jobs.
And it would increase the national assets
and not deplete them….
Our industry tends to become inflexible and static.
There are forces in it which work far more powerfully
in that direction than do monopolies
upon which it is usually blamed.
We do not get the decrease in price levels
that increasing efficiency should produce.
If we are going to stifle the opportunity of new men
to go into industry or of industry to expand,
then competition is still further stifled.
But by reversing this and applying such pressures
for competition as increased improvements
and expansion of plant, we can produce more competition
and lowering of prices in a day than
all the anti-monopoly legislation will produce in a year.12
On October 16 Hoover in Philadelphia talked about deceptive government,
and at Denver on the 30th he gave many details showing how the Roosevelt
administration used deceptive government accounting to mislead the people.
On 26 October 1937 Hoover spoke at Boston
to Young Republicans on American ideals.
He said,
True Liberalism is liberty organized under law.
It everlastingly reacts to one test:
Does this or that act make for
the freedom of mind and spirit of men?
Does it make for the dignity of all men?
And let no man tell you that intellectual and spiritual liberty
is not the sole anchor of American civilization.
It is the most difficult of all philosophies to realize
in government, because the very freedom
which fertilizes the soil of progress sprouts also
the weeds of selfishness and sordid ambition.
It can only be realized through prohibitions and protections
which prevent invasion of the freedom of others.
And it rests greatly upon responsibility
and self-restraint by the individual.
True liberalism does not start as an economic system.
An economic system flows from it.
The only economic system which will not destroy
intellectual and spiritual freedom is private enterprise,
regulated to prevent special privilege, or coercion.
Every new scientific discovery, every new invention
introduces new possibilities of privilege, as well as progress.
Reform must be ever in motion.
We agree with the New Deal objectives
in removal of abuses.
Many abuses are cured, and these objectives
were advocated by Republicans
long before the New Deal was born.
But the cure is not by their method of government by men
in the place of government by law.
Moreover, they seek to make us believe that
abuse cannot be cured without
that creeping Collectivism called Planned Economy….
Our people want jobs.
They want a just return for their labor.
They want opportunity to rise in their jobs.
They want security on the job.
They want security from want in old age.
They want collective bargaining by labor,
free from coercion.
They want decent returns from the farm.
They want education, health and recreation.
These and many others are the vital things
which our civilization must produce….
There is a mighty service to be performed.
This party must make the humanitarian objectives
of the nation possible which are otherwise
wrecked by wrongful and ineffective methods.
It must reform destructive economic policies
which undermine the standards of living
of the economic middle class and thus all the people.
It must emancipate the people from this
creeping collectivism and restore true liberalism.
It must emancipate them
from the moral degeneration in government.
The interest of the nation requires that the Republican Party
shall provide the country with positive
and affirmative principles and proposals
that will meet these yearnings of the people today
for a way out and forward.13
On November 8 at Colby College in Waterville,
Maine he spoke about freedom and government saying,
Let me shortly sketch what I conceive to be
a philosophy of government and economics
which would promote this sort of living and
would preserve free men and women in or modern world.
It is no magic formula.
It does not lend itself to oratory.
First: the main anchor of our civilization
must be intellectual and spiritual liberty.
Ideas, invention, initiative, enterprise and leadership
spring best from free men and women.
The only economic system which will not limit
or destroy these forces of progress is private enterprise.
Second: In the operation of the economic system
there is but one hope of increased security,
of increased standards of living, and of greater opportunity.
That is to drive every new invention, every machine,
every improvement, every elimination of waste,
unceasingly for the reduction of costs
and the maximum production that can be consumed.
We must work our machines heartlessly,
but not our men and women.
By these means we sell goods cheaper.
More people can buy.
And thereby we have higher wages,
more jobs and more new enterprise.
New industries and new articles add again
to the standards of living.
That is the road to more jobs;
it is the cure of temporary machine displacement.
That is no robbery; it is progress.
Third: To preserve freedom and equal opportunity
we must regulate business.
But true regulation is as far from
government-dictated business as the two poles.14
In 1937 Hoover contributed $100,000 to the Republican Party.
On 15 January 1938 Hoover spoke on radio to
Republican Women’s Clubs in New York, Chicago
and San Francisco about American peace policies.
This is what he had to say about the moral forces for peace:
The greatest opportunity to advance peace
in the world today lies in the use of moral forces.
Their implement is the public opinion of mankind.
And that brings me to the eighth policy of peace:
We should by every device and on every opportunity
co-operate with other nations to exert moral force
and build pacific agencies to preserve peace
or end conflict in the world.
We should be active in furthering disarmament.
We should continue to engage ourselves in treaties
of conciliation and arbitration to settle
our disputes with other nations by pacific means.
We should go further and support collective agreements
for judicial adjudication of conflict.
We should support collective agreement
for submission of disputes to arbitration.
We should uphold the Kellogg Pact.
We should refuse to give recognition to any advantage
gained by the violation of that Pact.
We should join other nations in the denunciation
of treaty violations that public opinion may be mobilized.
We should, in fact, never hesitate to build, even by an inch,
the moral foundations of the peace in the world.
Our faith must be that law and moral standards
can be advanced among nations.
People today scoff that
there is no longer validity in treaties;
that the pledged word of nations no longer has sanctity.
I know that nations have violated their agreements
with us to uphold the processes of peace.
Treaties building for moral foundations of the world
have been weakened.
Truly international lawlessness is spreading.
But if we do not hold faith that
the violation of international morals
brings its retribution in ultimate national decay,
and if we do not hold faith that
keeping to obligations is the substance of progress,
then this world is committed to despair.
And more, this civilization is committed to destruction.
We at least can keep the banner
of international morals aloft.
When we survey the present state of civilization
in the light of long history we can well conclude that
America has three dominant and immediate missions.
The first is to maintain its own Independence,
the second is to maintain a society of free men and women,
the third is to cooperate with the rest of the world
to lift the burdens of war
and to build again its prosperity and its hopes.
But after all it is spiritual, moral, and economic forces alone
which can attain these immense objectives.
They are the stars by which
the world must today return to its course.
Thus our country must assume
its share of leadership and responsibility.15
Hoover’s trip to Europe from New York began on
9 February 1938, and he returned on March 28.
In Belgium, and he was honored for having saved
the starving nation during the World War.
He opposed American military intervention in Europe.
After talking with Belgium’s Prime Minister Paul-Émile Janson
and his ministers Hoover summarized their views this way:
If war comes again, the United States should keep out.
First, because you must maintain at least one great center
of social stability, of moral and economic power,
around which the world can rally after a war is over;
and second, your American ideas of foreign relations
and your insistence on freedoms
which are not fitted to the European scene.
Your ideas introduce cross currents, fan conflicts
which can only delay those settlements
which Europe must find for itself.
If general war comes again,
European civilization will be near death;
it can only revive if you have preserved it in America
from the moral and physical destructions
which would come to you from war….
The ultimate and inevitable conflict in Europe
is between Germany and Russia,
both for ideological and economic and political reasons.
The Germans are land people;
their military strength is on land; they want land;
they will sooner or later clash with Russia
for Russia alone has the opportunities they want.
And the Germans want to remove what they consider
as their greatest menace, Communism.
Russia would have no objection to Germany at war
with Britain and western Europe
as that would weaken both the Democracies and Germany.
If the Germans did overrun western Europe,
Russia would only be waiting
for German exhaustion to attack her.
The greatest folly of all history would be for
the western Democracies to cultivate war with Germany.
The western powers should not
be drawn into conflict with her.
It would only demoralize themselves and aid Russia
and the spread of Communism in the end.16
In France the University of Lille gave Hoover an honorary degree,
the first of twelve he was given in Europe.
For seven weeks in Europe he studied economic, military,
and diplomatic conditions that were deteriorating.
He met with kings, 22 presidents, prime ministers, cabinet officers,
editors, professors, and other leaders in over 350 interviews.
The other countries on his tour were Switzerland, Austria, Czechoslovakia,
Germany, Poland Latvia, Estonia, Finland, Sweden, and England.
Hoover noted that by this time revolutions since 1919 had established
Fascist governments in ten countries with the combined population of
240 million while the free governments of the thirteen nations of Britain, Belgium,
France, Holland, Denmark, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania,
Sweden, Norway,
Switzerland, and Czechoslovakia had a total of 140 million people.
France had formed military alliances with Britain, Poland,
Czechoslovakia, and with Soviet Russia in 1935.
This is what Hoover wrote about his meetings
on March 3 with officials at the League of Nations:
My discussions at Geneva, beginning with Joseph Avenol,
the French Secretary General, embraced six officials
of the League, four American officials
and three professors of sociology and economics.
The men in the political section of the League
seemed utterly discouraged,
and Avenol had no credible suggestion
as to how the peace of Europe could be preserved.
He blamed Britain for the armament of Germany
and said it was the full return of the “balance of power”
theory of peace and that it was pointed at Russia.
The men at the heads of divisions of economic
and social work were confident that in these fields
the League was making substantial accomplishment.
But the League was the creation of liberal governments
and, with the steady European degeneration
of liberalism into totalitarianism, it was dying.
As if this were not enough to kill it,
the network of military alliances and the daily pressures
of power politics and balances of power
were steadily sapping its vitality.17
He visited Vienna and found that most
Austrians favored joining the Nazi union.
Hoover declined to visit Budapest because
Hungary had become a fascist dictatorship.
Adolf Hitler in Berlin invited Hoover and the American
Ambassador Hugh Wilson to meet with him and an interpreter on March 8.
Hitler became angry over issues such as Jews, democracy, and Communism.
Hoover felt that Hitler did not want war with the West
but that he was eager to get the grain in Ukraine.
He learned that Germany was building 4,800 military planes per year
and that they would have two million soldiers in 18 months.
Hitler on 14 September 1936 at Nuremberg had said,
If I had the Ural Mountains with their incalculable store
of treasures in raw materials, Siberia with its vast forests,
and the Ukraine with its tremendous wheat fields,
Germany and the National Socialist leadership
would swim in plenty!18
By November 1937 Germany, Japan, and Italy had formed the Axis alliance
by signing the Anti-Comintern Pact against the Communist International.
Hoover did not visit Italy which had seized Ethiopia in May 1936.
Hoover advised the British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain that
Germany would be prepared for another war in 18 months with two million men.
Although he did not go to Russia, Hoover learned that
the Communist Party members were middle class or like nobility.
The number of churches had been reduced from 46,000 to about 5,000.
The Czar had had 200,000 camps for political convicts,
and Stalin had 10 million political prisoners.
Hoover did not like the autocracy of Communism or of Fascism,
and he felt they would fight each other.
He believed that Americans could tolerate dictators
as long as they did not impact the United States.
Hoover opposed war and said, “We can never herd the world
into the paths of righteousness with the dogs of war.”19
Hoover went to Poland on March 10 and was told
how they were being squeezed by Hitler and Stalin.
While Hoover was in Estonia, Hitler and the
Germany army entered Vienna on March 12.
Hoover learned why Austria’s banking system had failed so severely in 1931.
Latvia’s President Karlis Ulmanis spoke English and told Hoover how
their parliamentary system broke down and became a Fascist government.
Hoover shared what he had learned in Europe
in New York City on March 31 saying,
Seven obvious forces or factors have come
to the forefront in Europe over these nineteen years.
The first of these is the rise of dictatorships—
totalitarian, authoritarian or centralized governments,
all with so-called Planned Economies.
Nationalism, militarism and imperialism
have certainly not diminished in nineteen years.
At one moment (if we include the Kerensky regime
in Russia) over 500,000,000 people in Europe
embraced the forms of Democracy.
Today, if we apply the very simple tests of free speech,
free press, free worship and constitutional protections
to individuals and minorities, then liberty has been eclipsed
amongst about 370,000,000 of these people.
But today there are 30,000,000 less people living
under liberal institutions than there were before the War.
The second great movement today,
partly cause and partly effect, is the race to arms.
Every nation in Europe—Communist, Fascist, Democratic—
is now building for war or defense
more feverishly than ever before in its history.
In five years their expenditures have doubled
from four to eight billion dollars annually.
That is probably three times as much
of their national substance as before the war.
Europe today is a rumbling war machine,
without the men yet in the trenches.
The third process in motion
is increased government debts and deficits.
There is hardly a balanced budget in Europe—
that is, if we strip off the disguises of words.
Government debts are increasing everywhere.
Another inflation in some form seems inevitable.
The fourth movement is every European nation
is striving for more and more self-sufficiency in industry
and food production for either military reasons
or to meet the necessities of ”Planned Economy.”
This applies not only to the Fascist and Communist areas
but in some degree to even England and France.
The old-fashioned barrier to imports by simple tariffs
has proved inadequate to protect these policies.
New and far more effective walls have been erected
around each nation by quotas, exchange controls,
internal price fixing, clearing agreements, and
intergovernmental agreements on both purchases and sales.
The fifth factor is the failure of the League of Nations
as a potent force for peace, and its complete replacement
by the old shifting balances of power.
And they are certainly shifting.
The sixth of these forces is fear—
fear by nations of one another,
fear by governments of their citizens,
fear by citizens of their governments
and the vague fear of people everywhere
that general war is upon them again.
And there is the fear of the promised massacre
of civil populations from the air.
The seventh force is the steady increase
in some nations of brutality, of terrorism,
and disregard for both life and justice.
Concentration camps, persecution of Jews, political trials,
bombing of civil populations are but the physical expression
of an underlying failure of morals terrible to contemplate.
All in all, it is an alarming and disheartening picture.
There is a brighter side.
Their recovery from the depression
has been better than ours.
They have little unemployment.
Some part of employment,
especially in the authoritarian states, is due to a boom
in armaments, nonproductive public works
and subsidized self-sufficiency programs.20
In a talk at Fresno, California on April 26 Hoover
discussed the following principles of morals in government:
First, the principles of clean public service require that
officials be selected on the merit system.
Second, the principle of honest elections requires that
government funds must not be spent to influence
the judgment and corrupt the vote of the people.
Third, the principle of honest accounting requires that
government business be conducted with glass-pockets.
Fourth, the principles of honor among men require that
government be scrupulous
in its financial transactions with the citizen.
Fifth, the principle of self-reliance requires that
government expenditures build up
the character of the people.
They must not be spent to undermine the responsibility,
the self-respect, the dignity that marks free men.
Sixth, the principle of law enforcement and obedience
to law is the first necessity of free government.
Seventh, the principles of national unity require that
government foster good will
between all groups and sections of the people.
Eighth, the principles of truth require both
moral and intellectual honesty in statements by officials.21
At Oklahoma City on May 5 Hoover spoke about
rising Communism and Fascism saying,
Let there be no mistake;
a new way of life is rising in the world.
It directly challenges our American concepts of free men.
And let me tell you that upon my recent journey
over and over again men of responsibility
breathed to me one prayer.
They did not seek military alliances with us.
They did not seek loans.
What they prayed was that
we hold the fort of liberty in America.
For that is the hope of the world.22
In his speech at Kansas City on September 28 Hoover explained
how his administration overcame the corruption of the spoils system
by using the Civil Service System to hire employees based on merit.
He said,
For fifty years the American people have fought
the politicians to dig out the spoils system.
They fought not alone to stop corruption but to stop
government employees from packing elections.
They built a great moral dike
of non-political selection by merit.
In six years we have lost forty years
of the ground gained by that moral crusade.
At the end of my Administration 83 percent
of all Federal employees had been selected
upon merit by the Civil Service Commission.
That is the highest figure ever attained.
And if a Democratic Congress had been willing,
it would have been 95 percent.
During the six years of Mr. Roosevelt’s Administration
over 300,000 office holders
have been politically appointed to the Federal government.
They were without the merit requirement
of the Civil Service.
And that does not include
some 100,000 part-time committee members.23
In 1938 Hoover published his speeches and public writings since 1933
as Addresses Upon the American Road.
In the 1938 elections the Republicans gained 8 seats in the US Senate
and 81 in the House of Representatives.
Hoover said that one reason why he opposed wars was
because the government usually adopted fascism.
Notes
1. Herbert Hoover: A Public Life by David Burner, p. 335.
2. The Memoirs of Herbert Hoover: The Great Depression 1929-1941, p. vi-vii.
3. The Challenge to Liberty by Herbert Hoover, p. 1-5.
4. Ibid, p. 203-204.
5. The Crusade Years 1933-1955: Herbert Hoover’s Lost Memoir, p. 110-111.
6.https://hoover.archives.gov/sites/default/files/research/ebooks/b3v1_full.pdf
7. Ibid.
8. Ibid.
9. The Crusade Years 1933-1955: Herbert Hoover’s Lost Memoir, p. 82.
10. The Crusade Years 1933-1955: Herbert Hoover’s Lost Memoir, p. 102-104.
11.https://hoover.archives.gov/sites/default/files/research/ebooks/b3v1_full.pdf
12. Ibid.
13. Ibid.
14. The Crusade Years 1933-1955: Herbert Hoover’s Lost Memoir, p. 164.
15.https://hoover.archives.gov/sites/default/files/research/ebooks/b3v1_full.pdf
16. The Crusade Years 1933-1955: Herbert Hoover’s Lost Memoir, p. 115-116.
17. Ibid. p. 117.
18. Freedom Betrayed: Herbert Hoover’s Secret History of the Second World War
and Its Aftermath, p. 66.
19. Herbert Hoover: A Life by Glen Jeansonne, p. 319.
20. The Crusade Years 1933-1955: Herbert Hoover’s Lost Memoir, p. 146-148.
21.https://hoover.archives.gov/sites/default/files/research/ebooks/b3v1_full.pdf
22. Freedom Betrayed: Herbert Hoover’s Secret History of the Second World War
and Its Aftermath, p. 104.
23. The Crusade Years 1933-1955: Herbert Hoover’s Lost Memoir, p. 167.
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