Mr. Hoover ' s Apology WHEN Mr. Hoover entered the White House,
he bad Lincoln's own study transformed from a bedroom back into the presiden- tial Workroom, and " it was in this room, so filled with the spirit of Lincoln, that Herbert Hoover chose to do his work.- The most sceptical spectator of the new administration can hardly have foreseen that when Mr. Hoover left Office four years later, his career would suggest that-of Lineoln's predeces- sor, James Buchanan, and that he would leave to the next administration the most desperate situation since the dark spring of 1861. No president, not even James Buchanan. left office more thoroughly discredited and no verdict: passed at such a moment should he allowed to stand. This bulky volume is an attempt to appeal against that verdict. It de- clares, in its last paragraph, that " Mr. Hoover well can afford to await the verdict of history. And his claim to statesman- ship is secure." It is a little early to declare so positively that the nature of the verdict of history is secure and in 'tiny case this.book is not an attempt to declare that verdict. It is that much less impressive thing, a political tract.
The thesis of this history is simple. There were grave faults in the American economic and especially in the American financial structure. This Mr. Hoover knew, and befOre the bursting of the bull market he had tried to cushion the. inevit- able explosion. But the sins of America were vernal.ocinipared with those of Europe. .:The bull market, itself, was largely due to European entanglements, to the Federal Reserve policy being too. easily influenced. by the needs of the European money market as its rulers were by the wiles of Messrs. Newman, Rist and Schacht. Though. Europe was largely to: 1aste, Mr. Hoover saved America from the worst consequenee'i oUlre panic and, but for further European lapses, would have avoided an-industrial, as apart from a stock-market, crash. He had, in fact, salvaged American industry when the Austrian panic began in 1981, a new panic which became fatal when France failed' to rise to 'the occasion offered by the famous Hoover moratorium. Then a new downward spiral began which forced AMerica down with it, and which largely nullified the effects:of:Mr. Hoover's salvage measures. That spiral ended in the summer of 1932.; the long-promised corner was reached and then politics came _in, _The Democratic majority., in Congress refused co-operation and the situation of the budget became alarming. After-the-election-a Mr. Reasevett,--them‘ were four months in which things got worse instead of better, because Mr. Roosevelt refused co-operation and, by his ambi- guous attitude on the currency question provoked the final dramatic catastrophe of the bank closures. That catastrophe was more dramatic than imPortant; and if it was important, it was due to the incoming, not to the outgoing, administration. In short, Mr. Hoover saved the United States several times only to have Europe destroy his work and, when he had saved it for the last time, the ungrateful. electorate gave power to a man whose selfish political caution combined with his lack of sound economic principles precipitated a last spasm whose result (for fate is less just - than history) was to discredit finally the innocent victim and (this is implied rather than stated) to give the new administration the chance of repairing some of the damage it had caused.
It has already been said that Mr. Hoover did not deserve all the ill that was said of him, but the case set out in this book badly overdoes-it: It would be possible to examine a great many points of detail and show a.certnin lack of critical acumen in the discussion they receive here, but one or serve. Every nation since the War hits indulged in the 'easy and comforting task of alibi, hunting, all ills have been attri- buted to the Treaty of Versailles, to the gold standard, to the wickedness of the French, of the Americans, even (oddly enough) to the selfish complacency of various British govern- ments. In this book all the ins that America suffers from are (Inc to Europe, to the Democrats; to the-World War, to Messrs. Coolidge and Harding (this is delicately put), to the Old Guard Republicans, to the .Progressive Republicans. This, I suggest, is overdoing it.
We find, for example, several entries representing indigna- tion at European tariff policies. Italy raised her tariffs to reply to British currency depreciation. " This prompted many other countries to follow with similar action, and further it *Yoked seriously' many American exports" 121): Then the adoption of a tariff by Britain " reduced our markets " (p. 140). But the boot is very much on the other
foot when American tariffs are in issue. Here we have several variant pleas in defence. Mr..Hoover, while campaigning in 1932, was very much on the defensive about the Smoot- Hawley tariff, and he pleaded that it did no harm ; he hardly dared claim that it did good. His apologists tell us, what we knew, that many details of that measure did not please the President apd that he signed the bill -reluctantly.. But what they do 'not make 'quite plain is that the American tariff had already got a big boost upwards-in Harding's time, and when Mr. Hoover asked his rhetorical question what damage had been done to world trade by the McKinley or other American tariffs in the past; he ignored the fact that since the War America had become a creditor power.
Messit: Myers and Newton • tell us, in case we have forgotten it, that the world War left important legacies of change and serious' liabilities after it. It did indeed, and if a European may fight back, it might be-suggested that one source of our and of 'America's troubles lay in--the refusal of the American government and people to realise that this truth affected them. The Republican party had nothing better to offer in 1921 than a return to the old panacea of high tariffs and business.domination. . It would be'unjust to blame Mr. Hoover for all the faults of the two admiaistrations in which he sat. It would not only have been More instal*. Coolidge had been in office in 1929-1931, it would, have been highly educational for the nation and for the Grand Old Party (if it is educable). But Mr. Hoover was elected as a Re- publican ; he got the assets of the party and with them he had to take the liabilities. He got the power of the name, the long association of the name with prosperity. He also got with it Senator Smoot and a good many other liabilities, like public devotion to the Eighteenth Amendment and a steady refusal to believe that America was not immune from the effects of world politics. After all, the party had done very well by denying such connexions, by denouncing economists (whom our authors regard as a dangerous " machine," almost as bad as the old hirelings of the Cobden club). The bill-may have been presented, to the wrong man, but not-to the wrong
party.' D: W. BROGAN:'
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