clipsed by a
preceding fame. As well be the son of William Shakespeare as the
political progeny of Hoover, The Food Administrator!

The War spoiled life for many men; for Wilson, for Baruch, for
Hoover. After its magnificent amplifications of personality, it is
hard to descend to every day, and be not a tremendous figure, but a
successful secretary of an unromantic department.

He might concentrate with advantage to his future fame. A brief
absence from front pages, under the connective "and," would cause
the public heart to grow fonder when he did "make something" of his
own department.

But two disqualifications stand in his way;--his lack of political
intelligence, and his consequent inability to make quick decisions
in a political atmosphere. His present diffusion of his energies
springs, I think, from indecision; for in politics he can not make
up his mind, as he can in business, where the greatest profit lies.

I first heard of this weakness of his when he was Food
Administrator in Washington, and when other members of the Wilson
War Administration, equal in rank with him and having to cooperate
with him, complained frequently of his slowness. He had able
subordinates, they said, the leading men in the various food
industries, and they had to make up his mind for him. I set this
charge down, at the time, to jealousy and prejudice, Mr. Hoover
being always an outsider in the Wilson administration; but the long
delay and immense difficulty he made over deciding, although all
his life a Republican, whether he was or was not a Republican in
the campaign of 1920, seemed all the proof of indecision that was
needed.

It sounds like heresy about one who has been advertised as he has;
but remember that we know little about him except what the best
press agents in history have said of him. He achieved his
professional success in the Orient, far from observation, and his
financial success far from American eyes. His public career in the
relief of Belgium and in the administration of food was the object
of world-wide good will. And, moreover, indecision in politics is
common enough among men who are strong and able in other activities.
Mr. Taft was a great judge but wrecked his administration as
President by inability to make up his mind. Senator Kellogg was a
brilliantly successful lawyer; but in public life he is so hesitant
that Minnesota politicians speak of him as "Nervous Nelly," and
even Mr. Taft, during the Tre