HOOVER, THE FOOD KING.

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LX, Issue 17065, 18 August 1917, Page 7

HOOVER, THE FOOD KING.

THE MAN WHO CONTROLS THE WOKLD'S SUPPLIES OF FOODSTUFFS.

A couple of years or so ago, if you had enquired about Mr. Herbert Hoover in London or New York, not one person in ten thousand would have recognised the name. If you had been fortunate enough to strike one who knew him, you would probably have been told, '"Oh, Hoover—he's a real good sort—a-capital man of business, with a big heart and a clever head, but too retiring ever to make a splash. Those who know him well think a lot of him, but they are few."

And yet to-day this obscure American is the food king, not only of America, but of the world— the man on whom, almost more than on any other, the world's destiny hangs. Without any official support, merely as a private citizen, he negotiated directly in the name, of suffering humanity with the belligerent Governments, and built up with amazing skill and speed the greatest philanthropic orgf>nisation the world has even known. He marshalled an army of a hundred thousand helpers, engaged fleets of ships and barges, and as chairman of the Belgian Relief Committee, poured food-stuffs into the empty larders of Belgium and France in tens of thousands of tons.

He had to encounter a thousand obstacle.^ many of them seemingly insuperable, but one by one they all' ranished before his tact and his indomitable will, and thus?, for more than two years he has kept life and hope in millions of the pitiful victims of war. VICTOEY DEPENDS ON FOOD. Through it all—such is the man's modesty—he kept himself so effectually in the background that his very name was unknown to ninety-nine cut of >i hundred of the people to whom he was such a benevolent Providence. Such is the man who at forty-three has been chosen to play the most difficult role in the war—tiiat of providing, conserving, and distributing the food on which victory and the world's peace depend. That he will be equal to this almost superhuman task no one who knows what he has already done doubts. But it will tax even his wonderful skill and t organising power to the utmost. He is the last man to underrate the difficulties in his path, but he faces them with his unconquerable optimism, although he has humorously professed that he "doesn't quite see how it is \:o be done." I&VER KNOWN TO BE TIRED. When he was asked his opinion of the problem the other day, he answered, with a smile and a twinkle in his eyes, "After trying most experiments and studying all others, I have come to the conclusion that the only real solution >s to be found in St. Matthew, chapter 15, which tells the story of the miraculous loaves and a few small fishes."

This story is typical alike of Mr. Hoover's sense of humour and his incorrigible modesty, for aliuough he.can talk brilliantly en most subjects, he is ?. veritable slphinx on himself and his work. For the rest, he has a strong personal magnetism, which infects his legion of helpers with, his own enthusiasm, and such a boundless1 energy that, however hard he works, he lias never been known to flag or to confess that he is tired.