At dinner, he inclines to bury his
face in his plate until the talk reaches some subject important to
him, when he explodes a few facts, and is once more silent.
Had he a personality with his instinct for publicity, he would be
another Roosevelt. But he is a bare expert.
I doubt if he really thinks of human beings as human beings; on the
contrary, some engineering graph represents humanity in his mind.
It is characteristic of him that he always speaks of the relief of
starving populations not in terms of human suffering, but in terms
of chemistry. The people, of whatever country he may be feeding,
have so many calories now, last month they had so many calories; if
they had ten calories more, they could maintain existence. Many
times have I heard this formula. It is a weakness in a democracy to
think of people in terms of graphs, and their welfare in terms of
calories; that is, if you hope to be President of that democracy--
not if you are content to be its excellent Secretary of Commerce.
When he came to Washington as a Food Administrator, he brought with
him an old associate, a professor from California. A few days later
the professor's wife arrived and went to live at the same house
where Mr. Hoover and her husband resided. Mr. Hoover knew her well.
She and her husband had long been his friends. He met her in the
hall, shook hands with her, welcomed her and then lapsed into
silence.
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