CAMPAIGN: Symbol

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In his years in the White House, when he had had trouble sleeping, it had been Mr. Hoover's habit to turn on the light and read for an hour or two—reading methodically through all the works on a particular period in the history of Egypt, all the volumes of Hakluyt's Voyages—as if he hoped to calm his mind with facts. Back at Stanford he prowled through the massive accumulation of facts in the Hoover War Library—the extraordinary collection then stored away in the basement of the Stanford library, with 175,000 books and pamphlets on World War I, the secret files of the German Intelligence Service, the world's largest collection of works on Communism, the documents of all the propaganda agencies working in Paris during the Peace Conference.

He walked in the hills behind Palo Alto with Stanford's President Ray Lyman Wilbur, went fishing at the drop of a hat. He took long motor trips, helped raise money for Stanford, talked with old pedagogical friends like Professor Murray (classical literature), Professor Lutz (history), and answered letters that poured in, 1,000 a day.

Five months after he left the White House, he said: "What do I do all day? I get up fairly early and take a look from the Palo Alto place into the Santa Clara Valley. It's very pleasant. Then I have breakfast and a walk. Then I get my mail and read the newspapers. Then I take another long look down the valley, thanking Providence I'm in California."

Question. Last week, when Republican leaders assembled in Washington, correspondents were surprised to find that the biggest question was: What will Herbert Hoover do? General agreement was that at next year's convention he will control at least 200 of the 1,000 delegates. Of course the Republicans agreed that 1940 would see the New Deal's end. But general agreement, not only in Washington D. C., but in Oregon, Illinois, Minnesota, Kansas, etc., was that, with stage set, audience waiting, superspectacle prepared—with a fine cast of characters, a wonderful story, a happy ending—the star performer was poison at the box office.

Nevertheless, it was as plain as a New Deal deficit to a Republican wheelhorse that in his exile Herbert Hoover had made himself a symbol of the Republican Party. To the dismay of many an ardent Republican, to the positive frenzy of some, in spite of the efforts of a few, he had gone up & down through his seven years with the fortunes of the party itself. Dignified, unbending, difficult in his personal relations, vulnerable to attack, sensitive to slights, losing votes by his stiffness as fast as he won them by his integrity and intelligence, he remained the symbol of Republicanism—just as he had been the symbol of its defeat when the pent-up storm burst on his head in 1932. Left-wing Republicans looked on him as The Man Who Came to Dinner—when slights did not work, they tried to make him an Elder Statesman; when he still refused to go away, they agreed hastily that he was the ablest U. S. Republican, while they canvassed busily for somebody else. In spite of all, last week in Washington the biggest question among Republicans remained: What will Herbert Hoover do?