Food as Power (Part Three of a Three-Part Series)
Guest Contributor: Brian D. Reese
Herbert Hoover expressed similar motives and attitudes with the broiling situation of the Bolshevik Revolution in a drastically changing Russia, with that conflict beginning in October 1917 and lasting until mid-June 1923. Simultaneously, British Prime Minister Lloyd George told the House of Commons in 1921 that after witnessing the emerging famine in Russia, the situation “was the most terrible visitation that had afflicted Europe or the world for centuries.”[1] The British leader and others felt that the problem had come to Europe suddenly and without warning. Prejudices should be moved aside, George asserted, as an estimated thirty-five million people could be affected.[2]
Hoover advocated relief for similar reasons that same year, yet he ran into difficulties here as well. He encountered Russian insistence on participation in relief operations from the United States-backed American Relief Administration (ARA), which had taken the position that no Soviet involvement would take place. U.S. President Warren Harding, his Cabinet, and Hoover were all concerned about Soviet involvement impeding any food distribution that would come from America and the ARA, but slightly regressed and thought the United States might allow Soviet officials to be in some contact with the relief operation if absolutely necessary.[3] Hoover did not seek to support a distinct political position in the situation, but with the permission of Harding and the Cabinet members utilized his position as Commerce Secretary to urge and forward efforts to a region overrun by the Bolsheviks to insist on feeding a famine-plagued population.
Hoover had already stated to fellow humanitarian Fridjof Nansen in Paris in 1919, foreseeing the long-term effect of a Russian famine, that the governments that he and the relief organizations represented would gladly cooperate, and “without thought of political, military or financial advantage, in any proposal which would relieve this situation in Russia.” He admitted that logistic difficulties certainly existed, with financial responsibility falling to the Russians. Yet he persisted in expressing his view to Nansen, describing the futility of the food relief if there could not be aim for peace in Russia, a possibility Hoover felt would be “impossible to consider.”[4]
Rejecting the revolutionary experimentation that he believed there was no room for in Europe, Hoover stressed the need to avoid militarism, inflation, and discriminatory national policies that he felt could emerge in the post-war Europe of 1919. The disruptive policies of Bolshevism produced the disorder that Hoover warned and worked against. Vladimir Lenin even admitted that without any international aid his government would perish.[5] Hoover replied that disorder and discontent would always happen with socialist systems or any other in which no equality, opportunity, or freedom to compete existed.[6]
In desperation, the Soviet government surmised that it would be able to export grain from the 1922 harvest in exchange for greatly needed machinery and other manufactured goods as long as the ARA continued relief in the famine stricken areas. Hoover partially objected to this plan of action, because the proposal supported the Soviet state. Yet he knew just as well that if the ARA pulled away from relief efforts, children and other civilians would indeed continue to suffer from hunger. He supported public funding as well for the relief efforts, largely as an ultimatum to the Soviets, in hopes of forcing them to export the grain that they had intended to use for the trade of goods. Consequently, he received no opposition.[7]
In response to an additional request for aid by the Soviet government in July 1921, Hoover stipulated for freedom of the ARA in their operations in Russia in exchange for the release of seven American political prisoners. In reply, the Soviets met for an accord in which ARA director Walter Lyman Brown followed Hoover’s specific directions. The agreement signed August 20 gave the ARA freedoms of selection of personnel, and the techniques and areas involved in the relief, while also allowing the Soviets to watch over political and commercial activities of both American and Soviet ARA workers. Hoover stressed to Brown the importance of refraining from Russian politics declaring “our mission is solely to save lives.”[8]
Difficulty existed from elements of the American public, just as it had during the Belgian relief efforts a few short years before, apprehensive of support and aid to the transpiring Bolshevik government and it subjected people. When a woman voiced her objection to the U.S. backed relief and aid to the Bolsheviks during a public meeting in August 2021, Hoover immediately reacted making his position on assistance very clear. After jumping to his feet and heatedly hitting the table he exclaimed “Twenty million people are starving. Whatever their politics, they shall be fed!”[9]
Historian Bruno Cabanas, with some contrast, argues that Hoover’s aims in Russia were more vague than other efforts by Nassen with the International Committee for Russian Relief (ICRR). He indicates that Nansen defended the humanitarian effort by his organization as only having intentions of helping people and not Bolsheviks.[10] Hoover emphasized the importance of the ARA operating as authentic agents of charity, the humanitarian stating to George Haskell the director of ARA Russian operations “There must be no discrimination as to politics, race or creed. Charity can take no interest in international politics, and any individual who does not so conceive his work should be withdrawn upon your initiative.”[11]
Hoover did not hide his longing to disrupt the Soviet Union by utilizing food “as a weapon against Communism.” He, along with the majority of other western leaders, viewed Bolshevism as a plague driven by poverty. In bringing humanitarian aid to the poverty-stricken areas, Hoover had been attempting to reveal the failure of communism from the carelessness of its authorities.[12] Consequently, Cabanas asserts, Hoover was also attempting to demonstrate the “generosity of American capitalists and establish future market opportunities.” The Committee for Relief in Belgium (CRB), through a completely new and massive effort in humanitarian work and independent of the American government, also had political and economic advantages of forming new markets, alongside of Hoover’s real feelings of sorrow towards the famine-stricken Belgians and French. Cabanas also implies that the moral and economic motives could not be independent of one another as viewed by Hoover.[13]
Accordingly, Hoover was a personality different from the anonymity of non-governmental organizations involved in humanitarianism today. He lacked charismatic qualities, seemed perpetually shy, rather sensitive, awkward, and was continually looking downward. The well-known relief organizer seemed to remain faithful to qualities of his Quaker upbringing in his demeanor, all in spite of leading one of the largest humanitarian efforts on earth and therefore giving that same effort the characteristic of true humanity.[14]
Hoover’s personality did not coincide well with expected or typical politician characteristics or mannerisms. He had difficulty expressing himself, never improving into a good public speaker, his demeanor most often accompanied by an absence of sociability, and antipathy for personal, spoken communication, relying heavily on written memorandum as historian Joan Hoff Wilson describes.[15] This behavior extended into his U.S. presidency between 1928 and 1933, giving evidence to Hoover not possessing a primary aim to promote his personal political image. Though exceptionally popular with the public for the results of his humanitarian work and as an effective Secretary of Commerce in the 1920s, his obsession with fact, efficiency and theories of volunteerism and associationism of businesses mixed with an apparent aversion to public openness, made communication with the American people difficult. It did not help him with his popularity in the attempt to be re-elected for U.S. president after the onset of the Great Depression, still sticking to his principles and effectively having the rather opposite personality of political showmanship that his successor Franklin Roosevelt easily exuded. Ultimately, Hoover’s voluminous amount of writing throughout his lifetime, with memoirs, arguments through essays like American Individualism, or his criticism of the New Deal shown in a later work The Challenge to Liberty. Further accounts of his experiences in An American Epic or Addresses Upon the American Road, among other collections, attest to Hoover’s gravitation towards asserting his theories and thoughts with the written word.
The adherence by Hoover to using food to alleviate the potential despair and pestilence persisted in the years after the presidency. As the Second World War raged, Hoover stressed the need for organization on the food front. He asserted to Senator Elbert D. Thomas of Utah in 1943 that there existed the strong need to “make an attempt to discharge our moral responsibilities” in aiding the affected countries of Europe.[16] Hoover expressed his apprehension near the end of the war for the need to address hunger issues again in Europe claiming that “apart from every humanitarian reason” food supply had to be delivered to the liberated countries of Europe if orderliness and secure governments were to ensue. Having the American armed forces only located among starving populations would not function as well as they potentially could, he implied, than if the U.S. army instead primarily assisted in the implementation of famine relief.[17] “One of the most terrible and most lasting of the hideous list of Hitler’s brutalities is this starving and stunting of the bodies and minds of the children in democracies.” Hoover related, describing the results of a neglectful, evil and militarized government that ultimately failed. The failure of the German nation brought famine, misery, and destabilization largely due to lack of focus on food and agriculture production, instead implementing a policy of military might and strength.[18]
President Harry S. Truman, and many of his advisors, looked past Hoover’s lack of political ease and avoidance of public expressiveness and recognized the ex-president’s drive and capability to promote and use food supply to create peace and stabilization in famine plagued regions. Henry L. Stimson, Secretary of War in 1945, strongly pressed for Hoover’s advice on how to approach the need to feed the war-torn and destitute European nations at the war’s end, suggesting the former president’s name to Truman who agreed that the famous humanitarian would be of critical value to the matter.[19] After Truman had personally extended the request to Hoover to assist in famine relief as Honorary Chairman of the Famine Emergency Committee (FEC), the ex-president had characteristically compiled any known statistics on the situation to review at their first meeting. Hoover estimated, with admittedly insufficient information, that the Europeans could exist on two levels: one of bare subsistence and the second a level that could bring them into the necessary stability, removing the possibilities of threats of unrest and chaos. “Bare subsistence meant hunger,” Hoover warned, “and hunger meant communism.”[20] He felt that the U.S. armed forces already present in Europe could indeed help with the distribution of food effort, but urged “That the red tape here in the United States with its mass of committees needed to be cut through at once.”[21]
The implication of the necessity to conduct immediate relief operations in Europe is apparent, in Hoover’s allusion to the potential quagmire of bureaucratic procedures that he knew existed in the federal government. Though the need was pressing, and aimed at averting both long and short-term hunger, despair, and discontent, Hoover’s goal with the FEC, CRB, and ARA was intended to help the afflicted and essentially set them on the right path, yet they not remain under a dominating foreign entity of control, but only assisted by one of a temporary presence.
Other world efforts to combat hunger contrast to Hoover’s short-term assistance for long-term gain. An example can be seen with the Green Revolution that occurred between the 1930s and late 1960s. The movement involved the implementation of modern technologies into third world nations, intended to greatly improve agricultural production and revise social issues, thereby saving millions of people who lived there. Historian Michael E. Latham asserts that the favorable responses and results of the Revolution, led largely by institutions like the International Rice Research Institute and the International Center for Wheat and Maize Improvement, actually “were exceptional” in their occurrence.[22] Yet in various locations, such as in India, the implementation of programs forced price declination, resulting smaller returns, and instigation of socioeconomic inequalities increased ethnic tensions. Added to this came political instability that prompted racial, religious and cultural tensions all on top of rising technological costs and lower crop yields, along with problematic environmental changes and issues.[23] Essentially, the intended long-term imposed technology upon other regions by other entities disrupted the cultures and created the same discontent that they were trying to stem.
Historian Nick Cullather indicates that the United States, led by President Richard Nixon in 1968 viewed the Green Revolution as a geopolitical advantage instead of a progressive triumph, urging U.S. corporations to take the initiative as a part of the Overseas Private Investment Corporation. He also perceived abundant crop yields in Vietnam to signal that Asia had found a new direction in agriculture.[24] Nevertheless, political uprising resulted from the Green Revolution processes in regions such as Pakistan and India, stemming the new technology effects on cultural tensions. The introduced technologies force social bonding in villages, Cullather elaborates, upsetting the ties of “obligation and kinship that acted as a steam valve in difficult times.”[25]
The temporary famine assistance that Hoover managed and advocated did not intend to shape or alter world cultures. It had been aimed at curbing the evil forces that hunger and want could precipitate, alongside the open vacuum to instability and unrest, essentially the “Horsemen of the Apocalypse,” that Hoover warned against in 1942.[26]
Herbert Hoover stands out as an individual who advocated and supported a philosophy that separated him from the often-implemented, long-held traditions of world relations. These had been practices of using or showing military force or power to accomplish subjugation or control of national populations or cultures. Instead, Hoover supported a different approach of using an adequate food supply to prevent and avoid scarcity, promote a sustainable level of contentment and eradicate hunger, in order to provide not only short-term famine and hunger relief, but to create a means for continuous peaceful and harmonious goals. It did not matter to Hoover what nationality, culture, or political affiliation a group of hungry people were part of, victims of political upheaval and discord, or inadvertent results of disorganization or neglect. They were all humans in need. They were people who were hungry. Hoover, The Great Humanitarian, had not invented the idea to use food as a means of power. He was among many other humanitarians of an evolving early twentieth century human rights advance, increasingly focused on humanitarianism and a progressive period. His roots, alongside his innate instincts and experience, moved him to the belief and implementation of using food as a basis for creating and perpetuating human and national stability, making him ultimately stand out among others in his massive efforts to help so many.
He believed just as strongly in the power, ability, and capacity of America. It was in the components of American freedoms, singular spirit, and essence of individualism that Hoover felt he could ultimately support U.S. ideals. As a sovereign and unique nation, the U.S. could positively affect and influence humanity worldwide. Hoover had not entered the humanitarian realm to promote his subsequent entrance into politics, but fundamentally, supported by his own convictions, used his own managerial abilities, adherence to efficient progressive methods, and his political experience to promote and support the use of food as power. Power aimed against military aggression and dehumanizing practices of arms use. This support and belief endured to the end of his life, creating a marked and sincere legacy that survives and will potentially and continually affect the future of all humanity.
[Editor's note: the author references the Committee for Relief in Belgium in this article. The correct name of the organization was the Commission for Relief in Belgium.]
[Brian D. Reese is a historian and postsecondary history instructor, with a research emphasis on Herbert Hoover and other U.S. presidents. He earned a BA in History at Western Oregon University and an MA in History at Portland State University, and currently lives in Salem, Oregon.]
Notes:
[1] “Hoover Rejects Bolshevist Terms, Harding Backs Him: President Ready to Join European Powers in Investigating European Relief Conditions, Lloyd George For Wide Aid,” The New York Times, August 17, 1921, 1.
[2] “Hoover Rejects Bolshevist Terms,” The New York Times, 1.
[3] “Hoover Rejects Bolshevist Terms,” The New York Times, 1.
[4] Herbert Hoover to Fridtjof Nassen, 9 April 1919, in The Memoirs of Herbert Hoover: Years of Adventure, 1974-1920 (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1961) 416-417.
[5] David Burner, Herbert Hoover: A Public Life (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1979) 130-131.
[6] Burner, Herbert Hoover: A Public Life, 131.
[7] Burner, Herbert Hoover: A Public Life, 135.
[8] Burner, Herbert Hoover: A Public Life, 131.
[9] Burner, Herbert Hoover: A Public Life, 131.
[10] Bruno Cabanas, The Great War and the Origins of Humanitarianism, 1918-1924 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014) 194.
[11] Cabanas, The Great War, 194.
[12] Cabanas, The Great War, 195.
[13] Cabanas, The Great War, 206-207.
[14] Cabanas, The Great War, 208.
[15] Joan Hoff Wilson, Herbert Hoover: Forgotten Progressive (Boston: Little Brown and Company, 1975) 28.
[16] Herbert Hoover to Senator Thomas of Utah, Washington D.C., 4 November 1943, in Addresses Upon the American Road by Herbert Hoover, World War II 1941-1945 (New York: D. Van Nostrand Company, Inc., 1946), 355.
[17] Herbert Hoover, “On United States Army Taking Over Food Relief to the Liberated Countries of Western Europe,” Radio Broadcast, New York, New York, 16 May 1945. Blue Network’s Headline Addition, in Addresses Upon the American Road, 363.
[18] Herbert Hoover, “Food for the Liberated Countries,” Speech at Carnegie Hall, New York, New York, 8 May 1945, in Addresses Upon the American Road, 357.
[19] Henry L. Stimson, Diary entry, 2 May 1945, p. 3, in Herbert Hoover and Harry S. Truman: A Documentary History, eds. Timothy Walch and Dwight M. Miller (Worland: High Plains Publishing Company, 1992) 30.
[20] Herbert Hoover, Notes on Meeting with President Truman, Washington D.C., 28 May 1945, in Herbert Hoover and Harry S. Truman, 38.
[21] Hoover, Notes on Meeting with President Truman, Herbert Hoover and Harry S. Truman, 39.
[22] Michale E. Latham, The Right Kind of Revolution: Modernization, Development and U.S. Foreign Policy from the Cold War to the Present (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2011) 118.
[23] Latham, The Right Kind of Revolution, 118.
[24] Nick Cullather, The Hungry World: America’s Cold War Battle against Poverty in Asia (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2010) 239.
[25] Cullather, The Hungry World, 241.
[26] Hoover, “We Have to Feed the World Again,” Addresses Upon the American Road, 270.
Bibliography:
Burner, David. Herbert Hoover: A Public Life. New York: Albert P. Knopf, 1979.
Cabanas, Bruno. The Great War and the Origins of Humanitarianism, 1918-1924. Cambridge: University Printing House, 2014.
Cullather, Nick. The Hungry World: America’s Cold War Battle Against Poverty in Asia. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2010.
Hoover, Herbert. Addresses Upon the American Road: World War II, 1941-1945. New York: D. Van Nostrand Company, Inc., 1946.
------. American Individualism. West Branch: Herbert Hoover Presidential Library Association, Inc., 1922.
------. The Challenge to Liberty. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1934.
------. The Memoirs of Herbert Hoover: Years of Adventure, 1874-1920. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1961.
Latham, Michael E.. The Right Kind of Revolution: Modernization, Development and U.S. Foreign Policy from the Cold War to the Present. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2011.
The New York Times. “Hoover Rejects Bolshevist Terms, Harding Backs Him: President Ready to Join European Powers in Investigating European Relief Conditions, Lloyd George For Wide Aide.” August 17, 1921, 1.
Walch, Timothy and Dwight M. Miller ed. Herbert Hoover and Harry S. Truman: A Documentary History. Worland: High Plains Publishing Company, 1992.
Wilson, Joan Hoff. Herbert Hoover: Forgotten Progressive. Boston: Little Brown and Company, 1975.