re were
"no left-overs, no worn-out rubbish of those inefficient ages" around
Germany's great school of mines.

So the Hoovers were little rewarded by their pilgrimage to Germany for
help in their attempt to resuscitate the Saxon Agricola. But they kept
on mining in the big tome and finally, in the fifth year of their
devoted spare-time labors they had before them a completed translation.

CHAPTER VII

THE WAR: THE MAN AND HIS FIRST SERVICE

From the first day of the World War Herbert Hoover has been a world
figure. But much of what he has done and how he has done it is still
only hazily known, for all the general public familiarity with his name
as head of the Belgian relief work, American food administrator, and,
finally, director-general of the American and Allied relief work in
Europe after the armistice. The public knows of him as the initiator and
head of great organizations with heart in them, which were successfully
managed on sound business principles. But it does not yet know the
special character of Hoover's own personal participation in them, his
original and resourceful contributions to their success, and the
formidable obstacles which he had constantly to overcome in making this
success possible. There was little that "just happened" which
contributed to this success; that which did just happen usually happened
wrong. Things came off because ideals were realized by practical method,
decision, and driving power. I should like to be able to give the people
of America a revealing glimpse, by outline and incident, of all this.
And I should like, too, to be able to make clear the pure Americanism of
this man; to disclose the basis of belief in the soundness of the
American heart and the practical possibilities of American democracy on
which Hoover banked in determining his methods and daring his decisions.
This belief was the easier to hold inasmuch as he has himself the
soundness of character, the fundamental conviction of democracy, and the
true philanthropy that he attributes to the average American. He is his
own American model.

To call Herbert Hoover "English" as a cheap form of derogation, is to
reveal a surprising paucity of invention in criticism. It is also unfair
to about as American an American as can be found. The translation of
Agricola, an account of which closed our last chapter, stretched over
the long time that it did, not alone because Mr. and Mrs. Hoover could
give only their s