Spiritual

When Herbert Hoover entered the White House two years ago, he refused to follow the usual presidential custom of addressing the annual meeting of the American Red Cross. Though his political office automatically made him honorary Red Cross president, he felt that he could not waste time in mere speechmaking. Since then there has been a great Drought in which the Red Cross became President Hoover's major instrument of relief, his chief weapon to fight congressional demands for Government assistance. Last week he was only too pleased to go before the 1931 meeting of the Red Cross in Washington and laud it for preserving "a great ideal of our people"--voluntary aid.

In his brief speech the President used the word "spiritual" twelve times to describe the quality of the Red Cross and the public response to its $10,000,000 appeal. He credited its "farsighted and early action" with averting "infinite suffering." He praised it for resisting the movement in Congress to make it a distributing agent for Treasury funds. Excerpts:

"If your officers had yielded ... it would have injured the spiritual responses of the American people. It would have been a step on the pathway of Government doles. . . . We are dealing with the intangibles of life and ideals. ... A voluntary deed is infinitely more precious to our national ideals and spirit than a thousandfold poured from the Treasury. . . . In all this there is the imponderable of spiritual ideal and spiritual growth. . . . You have renewed and invigorated the spiritual life of the nation."

What made President Hoover feel good last week about the Drought and the Red Cross was the report he received from Secretary of Agriculture Hyde, just back from an inspection trip. The President did the extraordinary thing of turning his office over to Secretary Hyde to address the Press thus: "Those Drought relief loans have reached the spot. . . . You can see new garden fences. . . . There is a very much more hopeful attitude all through the country. ... I didn't find a single criticism. ... I heard nothing of human suffering."

Supplementing the Hyde report, Chairman Payne of the Red Cross informed the President that his organization was feeding only about a million mouths now, compared with two million six weeks ago. Said he: "People in those sections are looking up. Arkansas is feeling good. The State now has her tail over the dashboard and is coming back fast."

P: Another speech made last week by President Hoover was to the governing board of the Pan-American Union. Its gist: "Pan-American Day will become an outward symbol of the constantly strengthening unity of purpose and unity of ideals of the republics of this hemisphere. . . . This spirit of mutual helpfulness is the cornerstone of true Pan-Americanism."

P: President Hoover disclosed last week how independent he can be in acting upon recommendations for duty flexing by his new Federal Tariff Commission. The Commission sent him a proposal to cut the rates on cherries "sulphured or in brine, stemmed or pitted," and tomatoes, canned, prepared or preserved. The President returned these recommendations without action to the Commission, informing it that its findings were "based upon conditions maintaining before the emergency created by the Drought," advising it to review the facts in the light of the next cherry and tomato crops.

P: Hanford MacNider, U.S. Minister to Canada, and Dr. Robert Manion, Canadian Minister of Railways and Canals, flew from Ottawa to Washington one day last week, paid a pop-in call on President Hoover. Other White House callers during the week included: Cicero Murray, chairman of the Oil States advisory committee for production limitation; Mrs. Henry W . Peabody, head of the Woman's National Committee of Law Enforcement, who made the President smile when she told him that "a man would be a fool to run for President as a Wet;" Chairman George Otis Smith of the Federal Power Commission, to present the first salmon killed this year in the Bangor, Me., pool.

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