Hoover criticized England and France for going to war two days
after Germans invaded Poland on 1 September 1939, and that night
Hoover went on radio and declared that “America must keep out of this war.”1
He continued to argue for that view, and he noted that
Soviet Russia was also an aggressor and was as dangerous as Germany.
The Soviet Union and Poland broke off diplomatic relations in September.
The Russian army invaded Finland on November 30, and in December
the Finland Government appealed to Hoover for help with relief.
The Russian attacks on Poland and Finland prompted Hoover
to raise $6 million to provide food for those countries.
He founded the National Committee on Food for the Small Democracies.
After a meeting at the Germany Embassy in Washington,
he announced he had an agreement to feed children in occupied Poland.
He was also given protection from German submarine attacks.
In August 1940 the democracies of Belgium, central Poland, Finland,
Holland, and Norway asked Hoover to help provide food and supplies.
As in the first World War the Allies expected their German enem
to provide food for nations they were occupying.
Again Hoover knew that the Germans would not do that.
He arranged for the Allies to lift their blockade to let food ships in,
and he persuaded the Germans to not take over these food supplies.
He appealed to “American public opinion and American moral leadership.
He said,
I cannot forget the faces of the hungry,
despaired, and terrorized women and little children,
who are the real victims of modern war.
I cannot forget the unending blight cast upon the world
by the sacrifice of the flower of every race
not only in the trenches but in the cradle.
All that was dreadful in the last war
beyond any words of mine.
But it is far worse, and there is far more of it in this war.
It is not alone the vast increase in air power.
But there is an increase in its ruthlessness and brutality.
And while in the last war only little democracy was invaded,
today there all these others….
There are things in this world that are not silenced
by ideological argument or armchair strategists
or declamation as to who is responsible.
They are not to be settled that way
because of the teachings of Christ
which have resounded down these two thousand years.
That teaching gave to mankind a new vision,
and part of that vision was mercy and compassion.
The greatest Teacher of mankind did not argue and debate
over the ideology and the sins of the two thieves.
And he thundered scorn
at the priest and the Levite who passed by.2
Hoover struggled for three years to help these starving democracies
while the Roosevelt Administration opposed his efforts.
Hoover had offered to assist the US Government, but in World War II
President Roosevelt refused to accept any help from Herbert Hoover.
In 1940 the New York University School of Commerce
professor Elmer E. Nyberg, who studied public speakers, wrote,
“Herbert Hoover has improved as a speaker more than any man in public life
and at the present time leads all possible Presidential
candidates in the content of his speeches.”3
He gave Hoover an A-plus and President Roosevelt an A-minus.
Hoover opposed the Lend-Lease Bill that passed on 11 March 1941
because it gave the President the power to wage war.
On March 28 Hoover at New Haven, Connecticut
gave a speech on “The Question of Peace” and said,
Today we are pledged to give Britain
the tools of war and our full economic aid….
The action of Congress has, however,
enormously changed the shape of things.
The aid to Britain combined with our own preparedness
program forces us a long way into a war economy.
Apart from these steps,
our indignation at gigantic wrong to the democracies;
the repugnance of free men
for the whole totalitarian ideology;
the steady impact of foreign propaganda;
the constant agitation of a minority
of our own citizens for all-out war—
all press upon us the mental and spiritual attitudes of war.
In a fog of emotions and appeals
we are fast driving into the psychosis of war….
America yearns for peace in the world.
The freedom of men comes only in peace.
It diminishes in war.
The abolition of poverty and want comes only in peace.
Poverty and want increase in war.
Yet the world does not know,
and we do not know how
world peace can be made and maintained.
The world does not know, and we do not know,
how in the face of steady world impoverishment,
we are to abolish want….
We joined in an exactly parallel war twenty-five years ago
for the same purposes and under the same impulses.
Even with victory, we failed to get
military, economic, or spiritual peace….
I am perhaps one of the few living Americans
who had full opportunity from high places to see intimately
the moving tragedy of the last World War.
I saw it from its beginnings in 1914 all the way down
through the long years which have not yet ended.
I saw it not only in its visible ghastliness,
but I lived with the invisible forces
which moved in its causes and its consequences….
I favored our entry into the last war
so that I speak as neither a pacifist nor a militarist
but rather as an analyst….
If we would see what the moral and spiritual forces are
that we have to meet,
we must consider the nature of total war.
The World War was the first total war of modern history.
It was the first Great War after the mechanical age….
That last world war was the first time that
the complete energy of the whole civil population
on both sides was mobilized to fight and provide materials.
It was total war….
In the last war for the first time systematic
and organized terrorization and killing of civilians
became a part of this strategy.
Cities, villages and homes were ruthlessly burned.
Unarmed seamen and innocent passengers
were drowned without a chance.
Fire and explosives were rained
on women and children from the skies….
In the course of that total war there developed
in the civil population on both sides
three fierce and total emotions.
These were hate, intolerance,
and a spirit of exalting crusade.
From the sufferings of civilians blazed first indignation,
and finally a fanatic hate.
It enveloped the minds of every man, woman and child….
The second of these emotions
from that total war was total intolerance.
National unity was essential
in the face of total national danger.
But impatience at discussion
rose rapidly to rabid intolerance.
In the democracies part of that intolerance ran quickly
to the suppression of free speech and free press.
The democratic governments had no need
to impose restraints on free expression.
The crowd howled down the most objective statement,
the most constructive criticism.
They denounced it as the paid voice of the enemy.
And intolerance went further.
It persecuted inoffensive citizens.
The third great emotion of that war
was a crusade of ideologies,
of philosophies of government and of life.
The ideology of Germany was much the same pattern
as the one now in use.
It was not so well perfected
in phrases and method as this one.
But they used most of the slogans we now hear.
On our side we went to war to defeat “Might makes Right,”
and “The enslavement of the individual to the State.”
We said we would make the “world safe for democracy.”
It was to be “a war to end war.”
We said the end of war was that enemy nations
must change their way of life
to freedom and democracy and peace.
The most sublime passions of our people
were summoned in action and sacrifice for this purpose….
To show how deeply these total emotions
dominate total war, I may recall that
after this had gone on for over two years in the last war
President Wilson endeavored
to bring about a negotiated peace.
His representatives sought my views on its practicality.
I felt that hope of negotiated peace was futile.
The civilians on both sides cried out in hate and suffering
for vengeance and crushing victory.
I advised that no statesman or leader
dared propose the necessary compromises
which must be the basis of negotiated peace.
And this proved to be the case….
Such war can apparently end only by exhaustion
or revolution on one side or the other.
And the victor in this race of exhaustion
is only one lap behind the vanquished….
There are economic necessities in total war
that create vast social aftermaths.
The World War of twenty-five years ago
was the first time the freedoms of business,
labor and agriculture were suspended.
Industry had to be expanded to meet war production.
It had to be constricted in its service to civilian living.
To direct these activities
dictatorial authority had to be lodged in the governments.
In the democracies we used soft phrases
to cover these coercions….
The Government increased production
both by going into business itself,
and by government dictation
to private owners as to what they must do.
Whatever the fine phrases were in which
we wrapped these actions, the cold fact was
that government in business was Socialism,
and government dictation to private owners was Fascism.
The word Fascism had not then been invented.
The freedom of labor and the freedom of the farmer
were driven a long way down that blind alley.
Where people attempted to stand on their so-called rights,
propaganda, intolerances and penalties of law
were directed to drive them to cover.
Taxes which expropriated savings,
pressure loans and inflation were necessary.
All that is the method of Fascism.
Is it to be the tragic jeopardy of democracy that
if it would go to war, it must adopt
the very systems which we abhor?...
With all these ideas and these emotions
we went to the peace table.
The American people at large were totally unprepared
for the problems of peacemaking.
And hate sat at that table.
Statesmen were not free agents.
The victorious peoples demanded revenge
and reparations for their wrongs and sufferings….
I recollect having had the temerity a few days
after the surrender of the Germans at the Armistice
to say we must at once take down
the food blockade on their women and children.
You would perhaps be surprised if you read
the universal condemnation I received,
not only in the Allied countries, but in America.
They demanded more starvation after the war was over.
Starvation is the mother of generations of hate….
After the last total war the consequence was a treaty
which in part sowed the dragons’ teeth of the present war.
President Wilson and his men
sought valiantly to moderate it.
The world hoped for a while that
through the high-minded formula of the League of Nations
the failures of the peace
could be remedied when hates died.
But the hates and fears lived on….
Then came the aftermaths of that total war.
Experience proved that liberty, freedom and democracy
could not be imposed on nations by battle.
All over Europe nations did come to the mourners’ bench
and appeared to be converted,
but soon some were backsliders.
Indeed, it was proved that intellectual ideas
rooted in a thousand years of racial history
cannot be uprooted with a machine gun.
Every nation was impoverished.
There were millions of maimed and orphaned.
Millions of homes and tons of ships were destroyed.
War production had to cease; industry was dislocated,
and millions of men had to be demobilized.
Unemployment and its thousands of miseries
were inevitable.
The victorious governments which had some
financial strength left carried through these burdens.
The vanquished governments could not do so.
Their unemployment, starvation
and a thousand miseries bred revolution.
They staved off the day of economic retribution
for a few years by financial legerdemain.
But finally the former enemy countries collapsed
and dragged even the victors into bitter depression.
In the defeated nations the people in renewed misery
demanded the existing system be turned out,
whatever it was….
When in later years confronted with difficulties,
the people demanded that
the Government resume these war methods.
We saw many of them reappear in soft phrases
to make them look like democracy….
In the present war, pressure of starvation and air attack
are far more diabolic than last time.
Compassion is far weaker than even last time….
Peace must come from the prosperity
and the hearts of men.
It cannot be held for long by machine guns.
The immediate questions which arise are these:
Are we giving aid simply to assure the independence of
Britain and the others who are fighting against aggression?
Or are we extending our view to remaking the world?
How are we going to hold down destructive hate
that makes constructive peace so difficult?
How are we to keep alight
compassion for the injured and starving?
How are we going to settle the relations
of the twenty races in Europe?
How are we going to secure that
liberty and freedom and democracy be accepted
by those races whose whole racial instincts rebel against it?
Are we going to police the world?
How are we going to save a world
ravaged by famine and pestilence?
How are we going to restore
economic prosperity to an impoverished world?
How are we going to assure
the proper elbow room for growing people?
How are we going to find refuge for the oppressed?...
I am one who prays with all my being
that America’s sons should not be sent to this war.
If God grants that we become no more deeply involved
than we are today we may be able to bring
a more constructive and warning voice to the peace table.
If our moral reservoirs are not drained by the full passions
of war we may bring sanity and compassion.
If our economic resources are still partly intact,
we may be able to contribute something
to restore another and better world.
If our faith in democracy is held high
amid the storms of war economy
we may yet keep the lamp of liberty alight.
Whether the fates determine that
we step fully into this war or not,
these same questions must be answered.
I bid you to think and think fast.
For our common purpose must be that
our country moves in the moral, the spiritual
and the social paths that
will keep it unimpaired in its freedoms,
its Christian ideals powerful and impregnable.4
The US Treasury froze Soviet credits on 14 June 1941.
On June 22 the German army attacked Russia.
On the 24th President Roosevelt announced that “the United States
would give all possible aid to Soviet Russia,”
releasing $40 million in Soviet credits.
On June 25 the US Undersecretary of State Sumner Welles told the press
that the President would not invoke the Neutrality Act against Russia
which meant that US ships could carry military supplies to Russian ports.
Hoover in a nationwide radio broadcast on June 29 said,
The Constitution of the United States provides that
Congress has the sole authority to declare war.
It is equally their responsibility to see that this country
does not go to war until they have authorized it.
The only reason for not submitting the matter
to the Congress would be that
Congress could not be trusted to do their bidding….
No president in a democracy
should take that responsibility….
In the last seven days that call to sacrifice American boys
for an ideal has been made
as a sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal.
For now we find ourselves promising aid to Stalin
and his militant Communist conspiracy
against the whole democratic ideals of the world….
When Russia was recognized by the United States in 1933,
the Soviets entered into a solemn agreement that
they would refrain from any propaganda, any organization,
or from injuring in any way whatsoever
the tranquility, prosperity, order or security
in any part of the United States….
Seven years later, the Dies Committee reported
unanimously and specifically that the Communist Party
in the United States is a Moscow conspiracy,
masked as a political party;
that its activities constitute a violation
of the Treaty of Recognition;
that under instructions from Moscow the Communists
had violated the laws of the United States;
that throughout the entire time they had been supplied
with funds from Moscow for activities
against the American people and the American Government.
The Dies Committee only confirmed
what most Americans already know.
Is the word of Stalin any better than the word of Hitler?...
If we go further and join the war and we win,
then we have won for Stalin the grip of communism
on Russia, the enslavement of nations,
and more opportunity for it to extend in the world.
We should at least cease to tell our sons that
they would be giving their lives
to restore democracy and freedom to the world.
Practical statesmanship leads
in the same path as moral statesmanship.
These two dictators—Stalin and Hitler—
are in deadly combat.
One of these two hideous ideologists
will disappear in this fratricidal war.
In any event both will be weakened.
Statesmanship demands that the United States stand aside
in watchful waiting, armed to the teeth,
while these men exhaust themselves.
Then the most powerful and potent nation in the world
can talk to mankind with a voice that will be heard.
If we get involved in this struggle
we, too, will be exhausted and feeble.
To align American ideals alongside Stalin
will be as great a violation of everything American
as to align ourselves with Hitler.
Can the American people debauch their sense
of moral values and the very essence of their freedom
by even a tacit alliance with Soviet Russia?
Such an alliance will bring sad retributions to our people.
If we go into this war we will aid Stalin
to hold his aggression against the four little democracies.
We will help him to survive and continue his terror
and his conspiracies against all democracies.
We should stop the chant about
leading the world to liberalism and freedom.
Again I say, if we join the war and Stalin wins,
we have aided him to impose
more communism on Europe and the world.
At least we could not with such a bedfellow say to our sons
that by making the supreme sacrifice,
they are restoring freedom to the world.
War alongside Stalin to impose freedom
is more than a travesty.
It is a tragedy….
We cannot slay an idea or an ideology with machine guns.
Ideas live in men’s minds in spite of military defeat.
They live until they have proved themselves
right or wrong….
Here in America today is the only remaining
sanctuary of freedom, the last oasis of civilization
and the last reserve of moral and economic strength.
If we are wise,
these values can be made to serve all mankind.5
President Roosevelt in 1940 had begun imposing economic pressures
on the Japanese who had invaded China, and he moved the US Navy forces
on the Pacific Coast to Pearl Harbor in the territory of Hawaii.
On 25 July 1941 Roosevelt announced more economic sanctions on Japan,
and all Japanese assets in the United States were frozen.
Also in 1941 Hoover got 37 US Senators to sign a petition supporting
his relief effort, but British Prime Minister Winston Churchill blocked that endeavor.
In Chicago on September 29 Hoover spoke about the crisis saying,
I hold, and 99 per cent of Americans hold,
that totalitarianism,
whether Nazism or Communism, is abominable.
Both forms are unmoral because they deny religion,
and there is no sanctity of agreement with them.
They are abhorrent because of their unspeakable cruelty
and their callous slaughter of millions of human beings.
I abhor any American compromise
or alliance with either one of them.
A cold survey of this world situation will show that
the dangers of ultimate totalitarian success
are very much less than even ten weeks ago.
The fratricidal war between Hitler and Stalin
is daily weakening both dictators….
The stern voice of experience says that
America cannot impose its freedoms and ideals
upon the twenty-six races of Europe or the world.
We should not again sacrifice our sons
for that proved will-o’-the-wisp.6
In that speech he also said,
Maintaining peace is a separate problem.
While we cannot impose freedom, America can
and must take part in maintaining peace in the world.
We can contribute more to it
if we are not exhausted morally, economically
and militarily by sending our boys into this war.7
In 1942 Herbert Hoover and the diplomat Hugh Gibson
wrote The Problems of Lasting Peace with 50 suggestions
that have been compared to Woodrow Wilson’s 14 Points.
They begin by identifying the seven dynamic forces that affect war and peace.
Ideology includes religion and other social,
economic, political, artistic, and scientific ideas.
Economics are relations between people and material goods.
Nationalism relates to race, language, religion, traditions, culture, and habits.
Militarism involved arrogance, aggression, and the use of violent force.
Imperialism is closely related to nationalism and militarism,
and it involves expansion beyond national borders.
Fear, hate, and revenge are common causes of war.
The will to peace is what can overcome the negative forces by
using spiritual transcendence and compassion to resolve conflicts by
various means such as treaties, diplomacy,
international law, and transnational organizations.
The authors briefly summarize the plans to end wars
devised by Gerohus in 1190, Pierre Dubois in 1306, Dante in 1312,
Emeric Crucé in 1623, William Penn in 1693, Saint-Pierre in 1712,
Jean-Jacques Rousseau in 1761, Jeremy Bentham in 1789,
and Immanuel Kant in 1795.
They describe how these forces affected wars and peace since 1774.
In the 140 years before 1914 Italy and Germany developed national unity,
and Japan became an empire.
Here are their 50 conclusions:
1. We have had experience with misunderstanding
and divided views on peace aims,
such as developed immediately after the Armistice in 1918
despite the Fourteen Points of President Wilson; therefore,
before this war ends,
the war aims and the principles of peace
should be reduced to more specific and more practical terms
than those expressed in the Atlantic Declaration
of President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Churchill.
And there should be agreement now on the methods
by which the machinery of peacemaking
is to be handled by the United Nations.
2. Any structure of lasting peace must consist of two parts.
The first is its foundation of political, territorial, military,
economic, and ideological settlements
which restore order and recovery in the world.
The second is the erection thereon
of some instrumentality to preserve peace.
The temple where the flame of peace is to be kept
will not endure unless the foundations are more deeply
and more securely laid
than those of Westphalia, Vienna, and Versailles.
3. Indeed, so far as America is concerned,
this war is a crusade for personal liberty
against totalitarianism and dictatorship.
The direction to destroy these and to substitute
personal freedom and representative government
“everywhere” has already been assigned to the peacemakers
by our expressed purpose in entering the war.
4. Our next deduction, therefore, is that
the American thesis of 1919, that peace should be built
on fostering representative government, was correct,
and the best foundation of hope for lasting peace.
5. Ideologies of personal liberty and free will
cannot be imposed by machine guns.
Wrong ideas cannot be cured by war or by treaty.
They are matters of mind and spirit.
The last acceptance of any governing idea lies deep
in the mores of races and in their intellectual processes.
Liberty does not come like manna from heaven;
it must be cultivated from rocky soil
with infinite patience and great human toil.
6. Our deduction from all experience is that at least
the forms of representative government must be accepted
by the enemy states if we are to have lasting peace.
Moreover, unless the representatives of a people
accept the terms, there can be no lasting peace.
7. Therefore, if we want the principle
of representative government to prevail,
we must make up our minds now to make such a peace
as will not only initiate it
but nurture it in the enemy states for long years to come.
8. Our certain deduction from the last experience is that
unless food blockade is instantly removed when firing
ceases and the enemy surrenders his military strength,
and unless extensive and instant relief is undertaken
to enemy and friend alike, there will be no hope of stability
in governments upon which peace can be built,
and no allaying of war hates.
9. We conclude, therefore, that the governments
of the world must bear the burdens of shipping,
credit, and distribution of supplies.
And they will have to bear these burdens for the enemy
as well as for liberated countries
if there is to be peace and recovery.
10. In our view, the ideals of freedom,
national unity during the war,
economic recovery after the war, and lasting peace
all require a strong reassurance now that the ideals
and objectives of the war include economic freedom
regulated to prevent abuse.
Such a determination is vital if the hopes,
confidence and initiative of men are to survive.
11. We believe that the whole experience of the last
twenty years of government trading in commodities,
credit, and shipping has demonstrated that
it is alive with international friction and threats to peace.
And therefore, from the standpoint of lasting peace,
the long view should be
to restore international trade to free enterprise.
12. There also enters the fact that international economy
must be a reflection of domestic economy.
International economic freedom cannot function if there is to
be a degree of domestic managed economy which stifles
free enterprise, for then there would be no substantial force
behind private trading, and governments must take over.
13. In any event, if there is to be a restoration
of a real volume of international trade,
there must be assurance of ultimate removal
of all government buying and selling in foreign markets
except for possible storage of raw materials
for international stabilization, to which we refer later.
14. Experience shows that this problem of monetary stability
must be taken up at the peace table.
We should begin again the work of the economic conference
instigated by Mr. Hoover in 1933,
where the combined resources and co-operative policies
of all nations were to be brought to bear.
It must be solved by calling upon the resources
of all nations, not of America alone.
15. All special trade agreements which establish privilege
between either two nations or groups should be abolished.
16. All quotas everywhere in the world should be abolished.
17. All monopolies and cartels which limit foreign trade
should be prohibited by the peace.
18. For world recovery and world good will,
tariffs certainly require two restraints:
first, that they be equal to all nations;
second, that they be no higher than will preserve
fair competition of imports with domestic production.
Furthermore, both experience and common sense declare
that all forms of trade barriers—
whether governmental buying and selling,
unstable currencies, reciprocal agreements, preferences,
quotas, monopolies, cartels, or excessive tariffs—
must have vigorous overhauling in the next peace.
Certainly, if there is to be relief from trade barriers,
there must be equal rights and no discrimination
between nations, and no agreements should be permitted
that are not open equally to all nations.
19. The economic fact is that there have always been
and are ample raw material supplies
available to any nation during peace
if they will produce the goods to exchange for them.
Too often, nations have consumed materials and labor
in making arms and munitions that otherwise
could be converted into goods
that could be exchanged for raw materials.
20. The whole experience of the past hundred years
shows that the assurance of supplies of raw materials
requires only a dissolution of monopoly controls,
an assurance of equal prices, open markets—and peace.
21. The constructive thing is to direct the streams
of immigration toward undeveloped countries.
The whole requires a definite plan of preparation
which should be taken up at the peace table.
There are large suitable areas in South America and Africa.
22. Just and humane rules of the sea
during war should again be revived.
The rights of neutrals should again be established.
They could no doubt be made to hold in secondary wars.
But if total war is to be a part of the calendar of humanity,
they have little hope of use in such wars
except so far as they hold by fear of reprisals.
Nevertheless, such standards should again
be erected in the world,
and President Wilson’s formula
is the most effective starting point.
23. We believe such action should be taken in the peace,
for it would lessen brutality, minimize the incentives
to build great navies, and open to the world
a new hope of lessened hate and revenge.
24. All these nations and peoples of Europe and Asia
will insist upon their independence and their own cultures.
To deny them will bring no lasting peace.
But there must need be better organization of them
if they are to keep the peace.
25. History has shown us that the possession
of highly developed armed forces by small nations
is disastrous in all its consequences.
These forces do not suffice
for successful defense against a powerful enemy.
They serve for the most part
as a real or fancied provocation,
and eventually lead to military disaster.
26. Certainly, the experience of history,
and notably of the last peace, would seem to show
at least the desirability of making the independence
of these small countries conditional upon their accepting
certain definite undertakings to refrain from building up
the sort of economic barriers and military action
which contributed so powerfully to their own collapse
and the collapse in Europe after the last war.
27. Bitter experience for a hundred years shows that
these European irredentas are a constant source of war.
Consideration should be given
even to the heroic remedy of transfer of populations.
28. There can be no lasting peace in Europe
with a dismembered Germany, any more than
there could be a lasting peace in North America
if other nations tried to separate the states or
to put parts of them under Mexico.
In the light of historical experience, the sound course is
to give the Germans an incentive for abandoning
their old ways and becoming a peaceful nation.
29. The political basis of imperialism is
being steadily destroyed by self-determination
and the consequent independence of nations.
The incentives of glory and power
will be greatly dimmed by the suffering
that will come to imperialistic nations from this war.
Moreover, the economic pressures to imperialism
through foreign trade, exploitation and emigration
of excess population can be ameliorated for the future.
In any event, with victory in this war, imperialism
will be at the lowest point in history, at least for a while.
30. Perhaps the course that offers the greatest hope
of sound achievement would be for the United Nations
to negotiate agreement, before the end of the war,
as to principles, and leave details
to be worked out by international commissions.
But experience shows that if such commissions
are to achieve anything substantial
they must have a clear mandate.
They cannot operate successfully on the basis of general
declarations which each nation is free to interpret for itself.
31. It is worth considering whether some of these
latter areas in particular should not be put
under international government with equal access
to all nations for immigration, trade,
and development of natural resources.
Particularly could their open spaces,
with proper organization, be made a refugee settlement
for the oppressed of every kind and as an outlet
for immigration from over-populated nations
without harm to the interests of the native populations.
32. Our experience since 1919 points to some
profound deductions confirmed by even earlier history.
One of them is:
Disarmament offers the only effective way
to bring militarism under control.
33. The complete idealistic view would perhaps be
the total dissolution of the military establishments
of all enemy nations and the substitution,
for purposes of a civic order,
of a constabulary of the police type,
excluding the whole officer and military caste
from such organization
and thus assuring their disappearance from the world.
34. Therefore, experience shows if there is to be
a reduction of arms among the victorious nations,
it must be agreed upon in advance,
and action should take place within weeks,
not months or years, after the firing ceases.
35. If the rate of $20,000,000,000 spent annually
in the world on arms before this war could be reduced
to small dimensions immediately with the end of the war,
that alone would ensure the recovery
of economic life and civilization.
The people of Germany, Japan, and Italy
would surely have reason to welcome that relief.
36. The sole possessor or possessors of military air power
could stop anyone from going to war.
And international action to enforce peace
would be enormously simplified.
37. In any event, victory will offer
an unparalleled opportunity to disarm and thereby reduce
the cost and dangers of arms to the world
to the lowest ebb for a whole century—
and that would contribute much
to quick recovery and lasting peace.
But if it is to be done,
it must be done at once at the peace table, not postponed.
38. There is just one discrimination
that can and should be made.
The leaders of the nations who brought this situation
upon the world must be made
to realize the enormity of their acts.
There can be no moral distinction,
and there should be no legal distinction between
such men and common criminals conspiring to murder.
Too long has it been assumed that
there is something sacred about the heads of state
who project or provoke war and wholesale murder.
39. Defeated people simply will not produce
to pay huge reparations.
And they cannot be made to do so.
If the peacemakers resolve to take a few billions
over a few years to give as a bonus to their widows,
orphans, and maimed, with a few articles of vertu
as mementos of the war,
they will save much worry at the peace table.
41. The fact is that there cannot be
any continuing inter-governmental debt
of consequential amounts between governments
in either reparations of loans.
42. Certainly, experience shows that
no nation can be punished as a whole
and at the same time leave any hope of lasting peace.
This endless treadmill of punishment must be stopped
in the world if there is to be real peace.
Victory with vengeance is
ultimate defeat in the modern world.
We can have peace, or we can have revenge;
but we cannot have both.
43. But the step we here suggest is that
there should be direct agreements between signatories
which would tend to settle many controversies
before they need reach any such international body.
That is, each nation should agree
to refer all disputes to arbitration
or to refer them to judicial settlement
or to establish cooling-off periods
with independent investigation.
44. It is, therefore, suggested that the objective should be
to build the concepts of revision into the body
of international law to a place of equal importance
with the other pacific methods, alongside of conciliation,
mediation, arbitration, judicial decision,
and cooling-off periods.
It is further suggested that the application of any nation
for revision of treaty provisions,
not sooner than ten years after its conclusion,
should be implemented by the appointment of a committee
of outstanding statesmen not interested in the dispute
to report and negotiate a reasonable settlement.
45. From our examination of world experience in
peacemaking, we believe it has been demonstrated that
after world wars peace cannot be made adequately by such
assemblies of scores of statesmen and diplomats as were
convened at Vienna and Versailles.
46. We suggest that there should be a new and different
approach to the whole machinery of peacemaking.
We suggest that
the peacemaking be divided into three stages:
1) That instead of the usual military “armistice”
with its deferment of peace, there should be substituted
a “conditional” peace which would include
not only the usual armistice provisions for ending combat
but also the settlement of certain urgent problems
which would reconstitute the forces of peace.
2) An intermediate period—a breathing spell—
for the rebuilding of political life and economic recovery.
3) A further period for settlement of the long-view
problems which require a cooling off of emotions.
Without such a period we cannot hope
for deliberation and careful development.
47. Therefore, regardless of the character
of the settlements to be made, we are convinced that
there is one essential preliminary to any peacemaking;
that is, before the end of hostilities there should be clear
and unequivocal agreement between the victorious powers
not only as to peace aims
but also as to the methods to govern the peacemaking.
48. We believe that during the interregnum period required
for the growth of political order, economic recovery, the
solution of these long-view problems, and the setting up of
machinery to preserve peace, the victorious powers must:
a) Assure order in the world by military force.
b) Instantly provide credits for food and its transportation
in order to stay famine and pestilence.
Otherwise there will be stunted minds and bodies,
decimating death and anarchy upon which
no lasting peace can be built.
c) Provide at once credits and raw materials in aid to the
restoration of industry and employment and to enable the
prostrate peoples to pay for their food supplies.
49. The purpose of this war,
the most terrible of three centuries,
is to make a lasting peace.
We must first win the war.
But we will not win lasting peace unless we prepare for it.
And we can prepare only by full and free public discussion
and the cold surgery of analysis.
50. We have pointed out that if we scan
these former convulsions of the modern Western world,
we can see that,
following these long periods of general war and disorder,
new shapes of civilization
and new forms of nations have emerged.
Civilization has taken new impulses and new directions.
We must expect new forms and new directions
from the gigantic explosion that began in 1914.
No one can pretend to see these shapes clearly.
We know, however, that whatever forms evolve,
the seven dynamic forces will have a part in their shaping.
And even if we are emerging into another era of civilization,
then also we shall need peace.
And this time the foundations of peace must be so laid
that destructive forces are allayed,
or again the structures that we erect
to preserve peace will fail.8
On 15 March 1943 Hoover spoke at the Midwest
Governors’ Conference at Des Moines and said,
One of these weaknesses is in the food sector.
And, indeed of the different sectors of the home front,
food is the greatest.
It stands next to the military effort in importance.
Food serves on both the home and the foreign fronts.
We have not only the job of feeding ourselves,
but also our Allies.
And if we would have peace after the war
instead of the anarchy of starving Europe,
we must be prepared to meet that also.
Therefore our production must be strengthened
for a huge and a long sustained effort.9
Hoover’s wife Lou died of a heart attack on 7 January 1944.
In his address to the Republican Convention on June 27 Hoover said,
It is obvious the American people have
but one purpose in this war.
We want to live in peace.
We do not want these horrors again.
We want no territory except some Pacific island bases
that will protect the United States.
We want no domination over any nation.
We want no indemnities.
We want no special privileges.
But we do want the freedom of nations
from the domination of others, call it by whatever name
we will—liberation of peoples,
self government or just restored sovereignty.
We want it both in the cause of freedom,
and we want it because we know that
there can be no lasting peace if enslaved people
must ceaselessly strive and fight for freedom.10
On October 9 the Dumbarton Oaks Conference announced their proposal.
Hoover wrote that he supported the main ideas, and he noted that there were
no provisions for review of onerous
or wrongful or obsolete treaties;
no adequate provision for regional organization;
no provision against dangers in the veto power;
and no definition of aggression.
I felt this plan was mostly an organization to settle quarrels
among small nations but did not face the real dangers
of world wars from quarrels among great nations.11
As long as Roosevelt was President, Hoover felt like a pariah.
After Franklin Roosevelt was elected for a fourth term in 1944,
Hoover decided to sell his home on S. Street in Washington.
Hoover and others criticized Roosevelt for his “unconditional surrender”
policy that caused the war to be extended.
In 1945 Hoover wrote The Basis of Lasting Peace.
In May 1945 he warned President Harry Truman that
war against Russia could cause “the extinction of Western civilization
or what there was left of it.”
He opposed policies that could lead to war, and he
advised holding up a banner of what is right.
The United Nations Charter was signed at San Francisco
on June 25, and Hoover wrote this in response:
The American people should be under no illusions
that the Charter assures lasting peace.
The Charter at best consists only of an expression
of desire and machinery to advance peace.
The problem of enduring peace
is far wider than the Charter.
The foundation of peace must also be laid in the economic
and political settlements among nations
by which this war is to be liquidated.
The nature of these settlements
will have more to do with lasting peace than the Charter.
The Charter could not preserve a bad peace.
The major strength of the Charter is a noble preamble,
and it provides for continuous meetings of the nations
where peace problems can be discussed.
It stimulates the methods
of peaceful settlement of controversies.
It re-establishes the World Court
and provides trusteeship for dependent countries.
It provides for a limited action
to prevent military aggression.
It sets up machinery for promotion
of social and economic welfare.
There are many weaknesses in the Charter.
There is no positive Bill of Rights for nations and men,
but only a mere suggestion that they should be promoted….
The political, moral and spiritual standards of conduct
of nations and of men are thus insufficiently defined
for the tests by which the conduct of nations
should be judged by the Security Council.
While the Security Council has the power
to stop military aggression among small nations,
yet this is not assured among the great nations,
because of the veto power….
I expressed great concern that there was no provision
in the Charter by which states annexed by Russia
or transformed into puppet governments
could secure restoration of their liberties
or independence through the Charter and said:
There will be no peace unless these rights be applied
to those peoples who have been deprived of them
during this war or who have not yet attained them.
This is more important today than ever before,
because liberty and freedom have shrunk
in great areas as a result of this war.12
In August 1945 he warned humanity about atomic weapons writing,
This is the most terrible and barbaric weapon
that has ever come to the hand of man.
Despite sophistries, its major use is not to kill fighting men,
but to kill women, children, and civilian men
of whole cities as a pressure on governments.
If it come into general use,
we may see all civilization destroyed.13
He also wrote to a friend,
The use of the atomic bomb … revolts me.
The only difference between this
and the use of poison gas
is the fear of retaliation.
We alone have the bomb.14
On October 5 the US Admiral Chester Nimitz in an
Associated Press interview in Washington said,
The atomic bomb did not win the war against Japan.
The Japanese had, in fact, already sued for peace
before the atomic age was announced to the world
with the destruction of Hiroshima
and before the Russian entry into the war.15
Truman in his first month as President invited Hoover to the White House,
and in 1946 he appointed him a commissioner to
study the war damage in Germany and Austria.
On March 1 Truman told Hoover, “You know more about feeding nations
and people than anybody in the world,”16
and he put Hoover in charge of postwar food relief.
Hoover and his staff of volunteers, who had provided relief during World War I,
used the studies prepared by the Combined Food Boards
in Washington in March 1946.
They further studied the food needs and sources of 25 nations
as they
traveled over 50,000 miles in a US Army Transport Service C-54 airplane.
They found that they would need 26 million tons of cereals,
and only 15 million tons were available.
Hoover traveled to countries with a food surplus that included
the United States, Canada, Britain, Argentina, and Thailand,
though he did not go to the Soviet Union and Australia.
In his report he estimated that the gap between what was available
and what was needed was not 11,000,000 tons
but was actually only 3,600,000 tons.
From March 17 to May 12 Hoover traveled to 28 countries,
and then from May 25 to June 19 he went to eleven additional nations.
He raised the needed money by getting donations from governments.
Hoover was one of the sponsors on a subcommittee that presented
a resolution in the United Nations General Assembly
for what became the United Nations International
Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF) on December 11.
When the Pentagon put restrictions on his second mission in January 1947,
Hoover called Truman, who allowed Hoover complete freedom.
He traveled 50,000 miles and visited 38 nations.
He met with 7 kings, 36 prime ministers, Pope Pius XII,
and a maharaja and Mahatma Gandhi in India.
Before going to Latin America he made a
radio address in the United States and said,
Hunger hangs over the homes
of more than eight hundred million people—
over one-third of the people of the earth.
Hunger is a silent visitor who comes like a shadow.
He sits beside every anxious mother three times a day.
But we can save these people from the worst, if we will.17
His work helped bring about school meals for
millions of children in occupied Germany.
In 1947 Truman asked Hoover to lead a project to reform
the federal
bureaucracy, and the Congress approved the Hoover Commission.
They made 273 recommendations, and Hoover calculated that if all of them
were implemented, the Federal Government would save about $4 billion per year.
Congress had appropriated only $2 million for the Hoover Commission’s expenses.
Hoover and some members received no compensation,
and the others of the twelve members of the Commission
needed a per diem compensation for their service.
On 22 June 1948 Hoover gave a long speech to the
Republican National Convention at Philadelphia that included this:
Liberty has been defeated in a score of nations.
Those governments have revived slavery.
They have revived mass guilt.
They have revived government
by hatred, by exile, by torture.
Today the men in the Kremlin hold in their right hands
the threat of military aggression against all civilization.
With their left hands
they work to weaken civilization by boring from within.
These tyrants have created a situation
new in all human experience.
We saved them from Hitler,
but they refuse to cooperate with us
to establish good will or peace on earth.
Thus today a powerful nation,
dominated by men without conscience, finds it useful
to have neither peace nor war in the world.
Whether some of us, who foresaw that danger
and warned of it, were right or wrong,
and whatever the terrible errors of American statesmanship
that helped bring it about, we are today faced with
a world situation in which there is little time for regrets.18
On 12 December 1949 Hoover gave an Address before the
Washington Conference of the Citizens Committee on
“Removing Obstacles to Economy and to Competence in Government.”
He said,
This has become a crusade for the intelligent reduction
of the expense of government.
It is a crusade to clear the track for competency.
It is a non-partisan crusade.
It is a job for citizenship rather than partisanship.
The Commission itself represented both political parties.
Its work is supported by President Truman
and by the leaders from both sides in Congress.
Your Citizens Committee embraces
our two living and wise former Vice-Presidents
and five former Cabinet officers
from both the Democratic and Republican side.
You include educators, writers, editors, publishers,
labor, and farm leaders.
You come from every state and Congressional district.
You are a mighty host, and you are in dead earnest.
It was not the field of our Commission to discuss
the merit or demerit of governmental policies.
Whatever those functions may be, our purpose is
to make them work more economically, more efficiently,
and with better service in their contacts with the people….
Our economists seem to agree that taxation beyond
25 percent of our national income will bring disaster….
On that subject, if you add up the actual and prospective
annual expenditures of the Federal Government
and the local governments, and if you truly compute
the national income, you will find this warning red light
no longer shines with an intensity of only 20 percent
but with considerably over 30 percent.
This means far more than 30 percent of the national income.
It is a combustion of your savings
and your possible standards of living.19
Their eight main reforms were: to reorganize Civil Service,
Budgeting and Accounting, and the Post Office;
to unify the services of hospitals, water conservation,
agricultural land, and transportation; and to reduce the 65 agencies
that report directly to the President by at least half.
In 1950 Hoover opposed the military intervening
in Korea and sending divisions to Europe.
Late in the year Truman invited Hoover to be chairman of a
bipartisan committee to investigate the Communists in the government.
Hoover refused to take the job, saying,
“I doubt if there are any consequential card-carrying
communists in the Government.”20
In 1953 President Eisenhower asked Hoover to
continue the project on government bureaucracy.
The Republican Hoover considered the Democrat Wilson his mentor,
and in 1958 he wrote The Ordeal of Woodrow Wilson, the first biography
of an ex-President written by an ex-President.
Hoover quoted these words from the conclusion of
Wilson’s declaration of war on 2 April 1917:
The world must be made safe for democracy.
Its peace must be planted
upon the tested foundations of political liberty.
We have no selfish ends to serve.
We desire no conquest, no dominion.
We seek no indemnities for ourselves,
no material compensation for the sacrifices
we shall freely make.
We are but one of the champions of the rights of mankind.
We shall be satisfied
when those rights have been made as secure
as the faith and the freedom of nations can make them….
The right is more precious than peace,
and we shall fight for the things
which we have always carried nearest our hearts,—
for democracy, for the right of those who submit
to authority to have a voice in their own governments,
for the rights and liberties of small nations,
for a universal dominion of right
by such a concert of free peoples
as shall bring peace and safety to all nations
and make the world itself at last free.21
Hoover reflected on the situation of Europe after President Wilson’s efforts
to bring the war to a conclusion and to craft a peace treaty that would
establish a League of Nations to preserve peace in the world with these words:
There are one or two points in connection
with the present treaty that need
careful consideration by the American public.
We need to digest the fact that we have
for a century and a half been advocating democracy
not only as a remedy for the internal ills of all society,
but also as the only real safeguard against war.
We have believed and proclaimed, in season and out,
that a world in which there was a free expression
and government based on the will of the majority
was essential for the advance of civilization,
and that we have proved
its enormous human benefits in our own country.
We went into the war to destroy autocracy
as a menace to our own and all other democracies.
If we had not come into the war, every inch of European soil
today would be under autocratic government.
We have imposed our will on the world.
Out of this victory has come the destruction
of the four great autocracies in Germany, Russia,
Turkey and Austria and the little autocracy in Greece.
New democracies have sprung into being.22
Hoover concluded the biography with this quotation from Wilson:
Only free peoples can hold their purpose and their honor
steady to a common end and prefer the interests of mankind
to any narrow interest of their own.
A steadfast concert for peace can never be maintained
except by a partnership of democratic nations.
No autocratic government could be trusted
to keep faith within it or observe its covenants.
It must be a league of honor.23
Hoover gathered his papers for the Hoover Institution of War,
Revolution and Peace that had been begun at Stanford in 1919.
The National Archives and Record Administration was built next
to the prairie cabin where Hoover had lived as a child in West Branch, Iowa.
The Hoover Presidential Foundation and the Hoover Library
and Museum became part of the Historic Site.
Hoover wrote his Memoirs in three volumes, and other writings include
An American Epic and Addresses Upon The American Road
in 4 volumes covering from 1933 to 1948.
His Freedom Betrayed: Herbert Hoover's Secret History
of the Second World War and Its Aftermath
criticized the foreign policy of Franklin Roosevelt.
Sixteen states declared his 90th birthday
on 11 August 1964 “Herbert Hoover Day.”
He was deaf and nearly blind and had cancer when he died of
an intestinal tract hemorrhage at the age of 90 in New York City on 20 October 1964.
Notes
1. Freedom Betrayed: Herbert Hoover’s Secret History of the Second World War
and Its Aftermath, p. xii.
2. Herbert Hoover: American Quaker by David Hinshaw, p. 328.
3. Herbert Hoover: A Life by Glen Jeansonne, p. 298.
4.https://hoover.archives.gov/sites/default/files/research/ebooks/b3v3_full.pdf
5. Freedom Betrayed: Herbert Hoover’s Secret History of the Second World War
and Its Aftermath, p. 231-234.
6. Ibid. p. 258, 259.
7.https://hoover.archives.gov/sites/default/files/research/ebooks/b3v3_full.pdf
8. The Problems of Lasting Peace by Herbert Hoover and Hugh Gibson,
p. 201, 203, 205-209, 212-214, 216, 218-220, 222-223, 225-229, 233-237,
239, 241, 243-246, 248-253, 256-257, 282-284, 286-288.
9. Herbert Hoover: American Quaker by David Hinshaw, p. 329.
10. Freedom Betrayed: Herbert Hoover’s Secret History of the Second World War
and Its Aftermath, p. 416-417.
11. Ibid. p. 544-545.
12. Ibid. p. 546-547.
13. Hoover: An Extraordinary Life in Extraordinary Times by Kenneth Whyte,
p. 580.
14. Herbert Hoover: President of the United States by Edgar Eugene Robinson
and Vaughn Davis Bornet, p. 303.
15. Freedom Betrayed: Herbert Hoover’s Secret History of the Second World War
and Its Aftermath, p. 567.
16. Herbert Hoover by William E. Leuchtenburg, p. 157.
17. Ibid. p. 158.
18. Herbert Hoover: American Quaker by David Hinshaw, p. 448-449.
19.https://hoover.archives.gov/sites/default/files/research/ebooks/b3v6_full.pdf
20. Herbert Hoover: A Public Life by David Burner, p. 335.
21. The Ordeal of Woodrow Wilson by Herbert Hoover, p. 19.
22. Ibid. p. 267.
23. Ibid. p. 303.
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