Part 12

“We have built a house that is not for Time’s throwing. We have gained a peace unshaken by pain forever. War knows no power. Safe shall be my going, Secretly armed against all death’s endeavor; Safe though all safety’s lost; safe where men fall; And if these poor limbs die, safest of all.”

A wonderful thing had happened. The young soldier who had lost many things those first weeks of the war--carefree days and nights, the joy and bright confidence of youth--had found his man’s soul. And the maker of verses had become a true poet. In losing his life he had found it, and found, too, the one gift he had long sought in vain.

Rupert Brooke had learned to “see life steadily and see it whole.” The five “1914 sonnets” have the wise simplicity, the deep feeling, and the large vision that belong to great poetry. When the poet-soldier embarked with the troops that were sent on the ill-starred Dardanelles campaign, he had the joy of knowing that whatever might befall, something of his inmost life would live forever in immortal verse to stir the hearts of living men.

He never reached Gallipoli. On April 23, 1915, the day of St. Michael and St. George, he died, not in battle, but of illness on a French hospital-ship. Early in April he had suffered a sunstroke, but had apparently recovered. Then it was known that he was the victim of blood-poisoning. “Death loves a shining mark!” and “Whom the Gods love!”--The unspoken words gripped the hearts of his comrades with chill fear, yet it seemed unbelievable that this radiant young life should be snuffed out.

The poet, himself, had a definite premonition of the end--During the days of fever, his mind found now and again a cool peace in the memories of the past. He was a Rugby boy again. Now he sat in the chapel, looking at the light as it fell, jeweled green, blue, and ruby-red, through the stained glass window of the Wise Men, that Dr. Arnold had brought from an old church at Aerschot, near Louvain. Louvain--Belgium! He could not lie there quietly; his country needed him. He moved suddenly as if about to rise, and a nurse bent over him anxiously. But--once more he was at Rugby, standing before the statue of the author of “Tom Brown” and spelling out its inscription as he had when a child: “_Watch ye. Stand fast in the faith. Quit ye like men. Be strong._”--Again he was on the porch leading to the quadrangle where the boys were assembled for house singing. How the “Floreat, floreat, floreat, Rugbeia” rang out!

Was it not getting very dark? He could scarcely see the white figure of the nurse. Perhaps there was going to be a storm.... He remembered a hurricane at Rugby when he was only eight years old--the “big storm,” they always called it. Many of the fine elms were laid low, among others the one survivor of Tom Brown’s “three trees.”

“Think of all the years of sun and wind that have been made into the magnificent strength of that tree,” some one had mourned. “And now see it snapped like a straw before the fury of a single hour!”

“Perhaps it’s happier to go like a warrior in battle, than just to grow old and die little by little,” the boy had said. He had somehow dimly felt that the splendid spirit of the tree--the life that ever flickered golden-green in the sunlight and danced in joyous abandon in the May breeze--had fared forth on the wings of the wind, a part of the brave spirit of things that deathless goes on forever from change to change....

They buried him at night, carrying his body by torchlight to an olive grove on the isle of Scyros, a mile inland on the heights. “If you go there,” writes Mr. Stephen Graham, “you will find a little wooden cross with just his name and the date of his birth and his death (1887-1915) marked in black.” One who knew him said, “Let his just epitaph be: ‘He went to war in the cause of peace and died without hate that love might live.’”

Better than any inscription or memorial, however, are the words of his own poem, _The Soldier_, in which his love for his country still lives. It echoes to-day in the hearts of many who, at their country’s call, “go to war in the cause of peace.”

And think, this heart, all evil shed away, A pulse in the eternal mind, no less Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England given; Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day; And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness, In hearts at peace, under an English heaven.

A CITIZEN OF THE WORLD: HERBERT C. HOOVER

I am a man, and nothing that concerns a man do I deem matter of indifference to me.

TERENCE.

This is the story of a young hero of to-day--of a leader who has, we may well hope, as many rich, useful years before him as those that make the tale we are about to tell.

History is not often willing to call a man happy--or a hero--while life lies ahead of him. Time can change everything. Time alone can prove everything. We must wait for the judgment of time, it is said.

We feel very sure, however, of the worth of the work of Herbert Clark Hoover, the man who gave up a business that meant the directorship of more than 125,000 workers in order that he might give his time and his powers to the task of feeding ten million helpless people in war-ravaged Belgium and northern France.

“If England could have availed herself of such talent for organization as H. C. Hoover has displayed in feeding the Belgians, we should be a good year nearer the end of the war than we are to-day,” said a prominent member of the British Parliament.

“There is a man who knows how to get things done!” we are hearing said on every side. “If America should feel the pinch of war and famine, Mr. Hoover could meet the problem of putting us on rations, and there would be no food riots.”

Who is this man who knows how to do things? In what school did he learn how to meet emergencies and how to manage men?

They tell us he was a Quaker lad, born on an Iowa farm, who in his early boyhood moved to a farm in the far West. Was it because of this early transplanting--this change to new scenes, new problems, new interests--that he learned to see things in a big way and to get a grip on what really matters in Iowa, in Oregon, in the world?

“The first thing you think about Hoover,” said a man who knew him in college, “is that he is a free soul and feels himself free. Most people are more or less hedged in by their own little affairs. His interests have no walls to shut him away from other people and their interests. He is a man who is in vital touch with what concerns other men.”

But we come once more to the question: how did he come by the vital touch which gives him this power over men and makes him in a very real sense a citizen of the world? You remember the exclamation of envious _Cassius_ when he was protesting to _Brutus_ against the growing influence of _Cæsar_:

Now in the names of all the gods at once, Upon what meat does this our Cæsar feed, That he is grown so great?

_Cassius_ was, of course, speaking in grudging scorn; but we often find ourselves thinking quite simply and sincerely that we would like to know what goes to the making of true power.

Sometimes we like to pretend that we can explain the making of a great man. We say, for example, of Lincoln: he early learned what it meant to meet hardship, so he was strong to endure; by hard times and hard work he learned the value of things, the things that really count; he knew what sorrow was, and the faith that is greater than grief, so he had a heart that could feel with the sorrows of others and could help them to win faithfulness through suffering. Because a truly sympathetic heart beats with the joys as well as the griefs of others, he cared for the little things that go to make up the big thing we call living, and his warm human touch made him a friend of simple people, with an understanding of all. Thus it was that he knew people in a real way and life in a true way, and so was able to be the leader of a nation in a time that tried the souls of the bravest. So we say, and fancy that we have explained Lincoln. But have we? Many other boys knew toil and want and sorrow, and many learned much, perhaps, in that hard school; but there was only one Lincoln.

We can, in truth, no more explain a great man than we can explain life itself. How is it that the acorn has power to take from the earth and air and sunshine the things that make the oak-tree, the monarch of the forest? How is it that of all the oaks in the woods of the world there are no two exactly alike? How is it that among all the children in a family, in a school, in a nation, there are no two really alike?

A boy I knew once put the puzzle in this way: “You would think that twins would be more truly twins than they are. But when they seem most _twinsy_, they’re somehow different, after all!”

All that we can say is that each child is himself alone, and that as the days go by the things he sees and hears, the things he thinks about and loves, the things he dreams and the things he does, are somehow made a part of him just as the soil and sunshine are made into the tree.

What was it in the Iowa farm life that became a part of the Quaker boy, Herbert Hoover? He learned to look life in the face, simply and frankly. Hard work, resolute wrestling with the brown earth, made his muscles firm and his nerves steady. The passing of the days and the seasons, the coming of the rain, the dew, and the frost, and the sweep of the storm, awoke in his spirit a love of nature and a delight in nature’s laws. “All’s love, yet all’s law,” whispered the wind as it passed over the fields of bending grain. Since all was law, one might, by studying the ways of seed and soil and weather, win a larger harvest than the steadiest toil, unaided by reason and resource, could coax from the long furrows. It was clear that thinking and planning brought a liberal increase to the yield of each acre. The might of man was not in muscle but in mind.

Then came the move to Oregon. How the Golden West opened up a whole vista of new ideas! How many kinds of interesting people there were in the world! He longed to go to college where one could get a bird’s-eye view of the whole field of what life had to offer before settling down to work in his own particular little garden-patch.

“I don’t want to go to a Quaker school, or a college founded by any other special sect,” he said. “I want to go where I will have a chance to see and judge everything fairly, without prejudice for or against any one line of thought.”

“The way of the Friends is a liberal enough way for a son of mine, or for any God-fearing person,” was his guardian’s reply. “Thee must not expect thy people to send thee to a place of worldly fashions and ideas.”

“It looks as if I should have to send myself, then,” said the young man, with a smile in his clear eyes, but with his chin looking even more determined than was its usual firm habit.

When Leland Stanford Junior University opened its doors in 1891, Herbert C. Hoover was one of those applying for admission. The first student to register for the engineering course, he was the distinguished nucleus of the Department of Geology and Mining. The first problem young Hoover had to solve at college, however, was the way of meeting his living expenses.

“What chances are there for a chap to earn money here?” he asked.

“The only job that seems to be lying about loose is that of serving in the dining-rooms,” he was told. “Student waiters are always in demand.”

The young Quaker looked as if he had been offered an unripe persimmon. “I suppose it’s true that ‘they also serve who only stand and wait,’” he drawled whimsically, “but somehow I can’t quite see myself in the part. And anyway,” he added reflectively, “I don’t know that I need depend on a job that is ‘lying about loose.’ I shouldn’t wonder if I’d have to look out for an opening that hasn’t been offered to every passer-by and become shop-worn.”

He had not been many days at the university before he discovered a need and an opportunity. There was no college laundry. “I think that the person who undertakes to organize the clean-linen business in this academic settlement will ‘also serve,’ and he won’t have to ‘wait’ for his reward!” he said to himself.

The really successful man of business is one who can at the same time create a demand and provide the means of meeting it. The college community awoke one morning to the realization that it needed above everything else efficient laundry-service. And it seemed that an alert young student of mining engineering was managing the business. Before long it was clear, not only that the college was by way of being systematically and satisfactorily served in this respect, but that, what was even more important, a man with a veritable genius for organization had appeared on the campus. It soon became natural to “let Hoover manage” the various student undertakings; and to this day “the way Hoover did things” is one of the most firmly established traditions of Leland Stanford.

Graduating from the university in the pioneer class of 1895, he served his apprenticeship at the practical work of mining engineering in Nevada County, California, by sending ore-laden cars from the opening of the mine to the reducing works. He earned two dollars a day at this job, and also the opportunity to prove himself equal to greater responsibility. The foreman nodded approvingly and said, “There’s a young chap that college couldn’t spoil! He has a degree _plus_ common sense, and so is ready to learn something from the experience that comes his way. And he’s always on the job--right to the minute. Any one can see he’s one that’s bound for the top!”

It seemed as if Fate were determined from the first that the young man should qualify as a citizen of the world as well as a master of mines. We next find him in that dreary waste of New South Wales known as Broken Hill. In a sun-smitten desert, whose buried wealth of zinc and gold is given grudgingly only to those who have grit to endure weary, parched days and pitiless, lonely nights, he met the ordeal, and proved himself still a man in No Man’s Land. He looked the desert phantoms in the face, and behold! they faded like a mirage. Only the chance of doing a full-sized man’s work remained.

The Broken Hill contract completed, he found new problems as a mining expert and manager of men in China. But he did not go to this new field alone. While at college he had found in one of his fellow-workers a kindred spirit, who was interested in the real things that were meat and drink to him. Miss Lou Henry was a live California girl, with warm human charm and a hobby for the marvels of geology. It was not strange that these two found it easy to fall into step, and that after a while they decided to fare forth on the adventure of living together.

It was an adventure with something more than the thrill of novel experience and the tonic of meeting new problems that awaited them in the Celestial Empire. For a long time a very strong feeling against foreigners and the changed life they were introducing into China had been smoldering among many of the people. There was a large party who believed that change was dangerous. They did not want railroads built and mines worked. The snorting locomotive, belching fire and smoke, seemed to them the herald of the hideous new order of things that the struggling peoples of the West were trying to bring into their mellow, peaceful civilization. The digging down into the ground was particularly alarming. Surely, that could not fail to disturb the dragon who slept within the earth and whose mighty length was coiled about the very foundations of the world. There would be earthquakes and other terrible signs of his anger.

The Boxer Society, whose name meant “the fist of righteous harmony,” and whose slogan was “Down with all foreigners,” became very powerful. “Let us be true to the old customs and keep China in the safe old way!” was the cry of the Boxers. The “righteous harmony” meant “China first,” and “China for the Chinese”; the “fist” meant “Death to Intruders!” There was a general uprising in 1900, and many foreigners and Chinese Christians were massacred. Mr. Hoover, who was at Tientsin in charge of important mining interests, found himself at the storm-center. It was his task to help save his faithful workers, yellow men as well as white, from the infuriated mob.

There was a time when it looked as if the rising tide of rebellion would sweep away all that opposed it before reinforcements from the Western nations could arrive. And when the troops did pour into Peking and Tientsin to rescue the besieged foreigners, another lawless period succeeded. Mr. Hoover found it almost as hard to protect property and innocent Chinese from soldiers, thirsty for loot, as it had been to hold the desperate Boxers at bay. The victorious troops as well as the vanquished fanatics seemed to

have eaten on the insane root That takes the reason prisoner.

The master of mines had a chance to prove himself now a master of men. He succeeded in safeguarding the interests of his company, and somehow he managed, too, to keep his faith in people in spite of the war madness. He never doubted that the wave of unreason and cruelty would pass, like the blackness of a storm. Reason and humanity would prevail, and kindly Nature would make each battle-scarred field of struggle and bloodshed smile again with flowers.

The adventure of living led the Hoovers to Australia, to Africa, to any and all places where there were mines to be worked. As manager of some very important mining interests Mr. Hoover’s judgment was sought wherever the struggle to win the treasures of the rocks presented special problems. He had now gained wealth and influence, but he was too big a man to rest back on what he had accomplished and content himself with making money.

“I have all the money I need,” he said. “I want to do some real work; it’s only doing things that counts.”

You know, of course, the joy of doing something quite apart from anything you have to do, just because you have taken up with the idea for its own sake. Then you run to meet any amount of effort, and work becomes play. Mr. Hoover and his wife now took up a task together with all the zest that one puts into a fascinating game. Can you imagine getting fun out of translating a great Latin book about mines and minerals?

“For some time I have looked forward to putting old Agricola into English,” explained Mr. Hoover; “we are having a real holiday working it up.”

“Who in the world was Agricola, and what does he matter to you?” demanded his friend, in amazement.

“Agricola, my dear fellow, was the Latinized name of a German mining engineer who lived in the early part of the sixteenth century--a time when it was not only the fashion to turn one’s name into Latin, but to write all books of any importance in that language. He matters a good deal to any one who happens to be especially interested in the science of mining. This volume we are at work on is the cornerstone of that science.”

“How, then, does it happen that it has never been translated before?” asked the friend.

“Well,” replied Mr. Hoover, with some hesitation, “you see it wasn’t a particularly easy job. Agricola’s Latin had its limitations, but his knowledge of minerals and mining problems was prodigious. Only a mining expert could possibly get at what he was trying to say, and most mining experts have something more paying to do than to undertake a thing of this kind.”

“I see,” retorted his friend, with a smile; “you are doing this because you have nothing more paying to do!”

“Yes,” replied Mr. Hoover, quietly, “there is nothing that is more paying than the thing that is your work--because you particularly want to do it.”

Mr. Hoover would say without any hesitation that the work which he volunteered to do when the storm of the great war broke on Europe in August, 1914, was “paying” in the same way. This citizen of the world was at his London headquarters, from which, as consulting engineer, he was directing vast mining interests, when the panic of fear seized the crowds of American tourists who had gone abroad as to a favorite pleasure-park and had found it suddenly transformed into a battle-field. Hundreds of people were as frightened and helpless as children caught in a burning building. All at once they found themselves in a strange, threatening world, without means of escape.

“Nobody seemed to know what was to be done with us, and nobody seemed to care,” explained a Vassar girl. “Their mobilizing was the only thing that mattered to them. There were no trains and steamers for us, and no money for our checks and letters of credit. Then Mr. Hoover came to the rescue. He saw that something was done, and it was done effectively. It took generalship, I can tell you, to handle that stampede--to get people from the Continent into England, to arrange for the advancement of funds to meet their needs, and to provide means of getting them back to America. They say he is a wonderful engineer, but I don’t think he ever carried through any more remarkable engineering feat than that was!”

The matter of giving temporary relief and providing transportation for some six or seven thousand anxious Americans was a simple undertaking, however, compared to Mr. Hoover’s next task.

In the autumn of 1914 the cry of a whole nation in distress startled the world. The people of Belgium were starving. The terror and destruction of war had swept over a helpless little country leaving want and misery everywhere. There was need of instant and efficient aid. Of course only a neutral would be permitted to serve, and equally of course, only a man used to handling great enterprises--a captain of industry and a master of men--would be able to serve in such a crisis. It did not take a prophet or seer to see in Herbert Clark Hoover, that master of vast engineering projects who had given himself so generously to helping his fellow-Americans in distress, a man fitted to meet the needs of the time. And Mr. Walter H. Page, American Ambassador to England, appealed to Mr. Hoover, American in London, citizen of the world and lover of humanity, to act as chairman of the Commission for Relief in Belgium.

“Who is this Mr. Hoover, and will he be really able to man and manage the relief-ship?” was demanded on every side, in America as well as in Europe.

“If anybody can save Belgium, he can,” vouched Mr. Page. “There never was such a genius for organization. He can grasp the most complex problems, wheels within wheels, and get all the cogs running in perfect harmony. Besides, he will have the courage to act promptly as well as effectively when once he has determined on the right course to pursue. He is not afraid of precedent and red tape. A man who has developed and directed large mining interests all over the world and who has been consulting engineer for over fifty mining companies, he cares more about doing a good job than making money. He’s giving himself now heart and soul to this relief work, and we may be sure, if the thing is humanly possible, that he will find a way.”