Where had Mr. Hearst obtained the unfortunate
information? He saw plots and treachery. Someone in his confidence
must have betrayed him for money. A careful investigation was made,
and it was discovered that the editor had drawn upon "Who's Who,"
to which Mr. Hoover himself had furnished the information before he
began thinking of the Presidency.
The politicians tricked him so completely in the preconvention
campaign of 1920 that he has the best reasons for distrusting
himself. He was always, during that campaign, a candidate for the
Republican nomination to the Presidency. At the very time when his
spokesman, Julius Barnes, was saying for him that he could not
choose between the two parties until he had seen their candidates
and read their platforms, and when the Democrats were most
seriously impressed with his availability, the manager of his paper
in Washington said to me, "This talk of Hoover for the Democratic
nomination is moonshine. He won't take it."
"Why not," I asked him.
"Because," he replied, "he does not think it is worth having," a
quite practical reason which differed wholly from the official
explanation that Mr. Hoover was waiting to see which party was
progressive so that he might oppose reaction.
His subsequent support of the more conservative candidate and the
more conservative party bore out the truth of what his newspaper
manager had said.
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