The Ancient Warrior

At the first notes of California, Here I Come, the big, restless evening-session crowds came to their feet on the floor and in the galleries. Politicos on the platform turned, beaming and clapping. And there was former President Herbert Hoover, walking with an old man's slow and careful step. About him burst a deafening roar of applause. It went on & on.

Night Among Friends. The old gentleman smiled a cautious smile, lifted a hand in greeting, and stood holding himself stiffly erect, almost as if overwhelmed by the sound. Herbert Hoover was 77. Time had whitened his hair, turned his cheeks a flaming pink, and softened the lines of his face. For 20 years he had suffered, with dignity and without complaint, an auto da fe of criticism such as few men, even in public life, have ever endured. But this was his night among friends, his night for the homage due an ancient warrior. The uproar lasted for 13 long minutes.

"That," he said finally, and in heartfelt tones, "was some welcome . .

"But," he went on in his dry and unemotional voice, "from the inexorable course of nature, this is likely to be the last time that I shall attend your convention." A long-drawn "Nooo" burst from the crowd. But a subtle change came over the hall. The audience reacted less like a crowd listening to a political speech than a big family affectionately assembled to hear a patriarch warn them, as old men will, about the pitfalls of a world they thought they knew better than he.

His text: that the "words and spirit [of the Constitution] have been distorted and violated" during 20 years of Democratic administrations, and that the freedom of men--an issue "which transcends all transitory questions of national life" --stands at stake in 1952. He criticized the Administration for "tax and tax" at home and "spend and spend" abroad. He made no bones over his conviction that American efforts at arming Western Europe might result in "the bankruptcy which is Stalin's greatest hope."

Although this is markedly different from General Eisenhower's view of Western Europe, even Ike's delegates on the floor joined in the applause.

Rattlesnake Strategy. "I do not propose," Hoover went on, "that we retreat into 'our shell like a turtle." Then his old gift for the precisely wrong word asserted itself: "I do propose the deadly reprisal strategy of a rattlesnake." To do this "within our economic capacities," he asked for an end of great U.S. ground armies. "The sure defense of London, New York and Paris is the fear of counterattack on Moscow from the air." He was interrupted 71 times by applause, yells and cheers. When he finished his speech--"I pray [to God] to strengthen your hands and to give you courage"--a second great ovation burst out in the auditorium. Crowds in the gallery behind the speaker's stand whistled and shouted until he turned toward them. The ovation was in marked contrast to the reception of MacArthur's speech of the night before, which somehow failed to stir the convention.

When National Chairman Guy Gabrielson approached Hoover, amid the clamor, to present him with a gold medal of appreciation, tears started in the old man's eyes. Finally the sound died down, the convention went on. Mr. Hoover walked slowly to the rear of the platform, his medal pinned on his coat, and eased himself down on a chair with the air of a man whose work is finally done.

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