CAMPAIGN: Symbol

(See Cover)

Last week for Herbert Hoover a cycle of history came full circle. Bombs fell on Helsinki and Bolshevism again marched West.

Among the wobbling governments of post-War Europe, when revolution or relief were the alternatives, he had packed a lifetime of experience: cabling pleas for food, studying revolution in Hungary as the Bela Kun* Government rose and fell racing around a Europe where panics and crises, revolution and breakdown flared in the first days of peace. Through ten of those 20 years he had been Herbert Hoover, Secretary of Commerce organizer of Mississippi flood relief. His reputation as a humanitarian and an administrator was unequalled. Through the next ten years that reputation had been overlaid by another: he had been the President and ex-President, as soundly defeated as any in the history of the U. S., his personality and his political philosophy buried under a mass of invective that had held him personally responsible for the Great Depression. Last week the cycle closed: on the stage of history was a conflict and a need that none better than he understood.

He issued an appeal, got newspapers to accept contributions for Finnish relief, telephoned an address to a mass meeting in Manhattan. He wrote: "America has a duty to do its part in the relief of the hideous suffering of the Finnish people. Our people should have an outlet in which to express their individual and practical sympathy. . . .

"I fully realize the present needs of many of our own people and also of the Polish people as well, the committee of which I am also a member. I would not wish any contributions to this fund for Finland to lessen the support of all these needs. But . . . Americans should also make sacrifices for them."

Quiet. Seven years ago next March Herbert Hoover left the White House. On a grey, gusty afternoon he stood stoically on the rear platform of the train that was to take him away from Washington, facing a subdued crowd that had gathered to see him leave. His pale face was heavily lined; to newspapermen still sensitive enough to recognize a human tragedy in a political battle, he seemed, not like a statesman who has lost, but like a man who had suffered some personal grief as real as the death of a friend. The inauguration ceremonies were over; the ex-President waited heavily through this last ritual of his office. With the train's first movement he turned quickly and went into his private car. His secretary, who feared that he was at the edge of collapse, thought that the train had started not a moment too soon.

Only tough old John Quincy Adams had gone out of the Presidency so thoroughly unpopular. Hoover had labored mightily, with a stubborn and inflexible conviction in the Tightness of his course, only to see his work go down in public ruin. And no U. S. politician except Adams, calmly stepping back to the House of Representatives to make his experience count, had recovered in political or human terms from the consequences of such a defeat.