Hoover. Finding markets for American wares all over the earth will
be made a romance only second in interest to the feeding of
Belgium.
It was not an accident that he was better advertised than any
general, admiral, or statesman of the War. It was not all due to
the good will of the public, to the work which he did in Belgium
and in this country, nor to the extraordinary press agents whose
services he was able to command because of that good will. Back of
it all was his own instinct for publicity, his sense of what
interests the people, his assiduous cultivation of editors and
reporters. He has magazine and newspaper contacts only exceeded by
those of Roosevelt in his time, and a sense of the power of
publicity only exceeded by Roosevelt's.
When he was threatening to win the Democratic nomination for the
Presidency in spite of the fact that he was not a Democrat, a
supporter of McAdoo complained bitterly to me, "Confound him! He
has a genius for self-advertising. He is not half the man McAdoo
is. He hasn't McAdoo's courage, optimism, force, or general
statesmanship; but he has this infernal talent for getting himself
in the papers. There is not much to him but press agenting; but how
can you beat that?"
But though his own name has come to count for more than the causes
he represents, so that the best way to obtain aid is to ask for it
with "Hoover" in big letters and with the suffering children of
Central Europe in small letters, still he remains only a name to
the American people.
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