An Uncommon Man

Since last spring the little Quaker farming town of West Branch, Iowa (pop. 769) had been getting ready for the 80th birthday of its famous son. The Lions International club pushed a campaign to get the town's modest homes gleaming with new paint, and front yards trimmed to the quick. Work was rushed on the new elementary school so that the famous guest could dedicate it. The night before the big day, the Women's Society of Christian Service of the Methodist Church stored gallons of pickled beets and great bowls of applesauce in the demonstration refrigerators of Rummels' appliance store on Main Street. At mid-morning the ladies began carrying the food to a special luncheon tent, along with 60 fried chickens, cords of fresh sweet corn, and the 100-egg birthday cake baked by Mrs. Harold Heick.

Smiling mistily, Herbert Clark Hoover rode into West Branch at the head of a long motor caravan, finally wound up the ceremonial schedule amid the bunting of Hoover Park, hard by the three-room frame house where he was born Aug. 10, 1874. At speechmaking time, he was eulogized by Iowa's Governor William Beardsley and Illinois' Governor William Stratton, awarded his 80th honorary degree (Doctor of Laws from the State University of Iowa), and praised in a letter from President Eisenhower ("I look anew, and with ever-increasing admiration, upon your distinguished career"). Then Herbert Hoover stood up to tell West Branch and the U.S. what a statesman of 80--"a long time for a man to live"--had learned about his country.

At one time, he said, "our people were . . . closer to the goals of human welfare than any other civilization in all history"--thanks to a sound political and economic system, and to carefully fashioned, checks and balances to prevent political and economic tyranny. But "during the 20 years before this Administration," these checks and balances were upset by the expansion of federal power, both as a result of war and of "the various infections of socialism." One kind of balance was upset, for example, by "unrestrained presidential actions" that produced such highhanded executive agreements as Yalta and Teheran. "Our tacit alliance with Soviet Russia spread Communism over the earth . . .

"Our dangers from the gigantic Communist source of evil in the world are unending," said Hoover. "Amid these malign forces, our haunting anxiety and our paramount necessity is the defense of our country."

Imaginary Creature. Hoover was clearly as worried about the internal defenses of the nation as the external defenses. Said he: "Among the delusions offered us by fuzzy-minded people is that imaginary creature, the Common Man. It is dinned into us that this is the Century of the Common Man . . . It is the negation of individual dignity and a slogan of mediocrity and uniformity . . . The imperative need of this nation at all times is the leadership of the Uncommon Men or Women. We need men and women who cannot be intimidated, who are not concerned with applause meters, nor those who sell tomorrow for cheers today.

"A nation is strong or weak, it thrives or perishes upon what it believes to be true. If our youth is rightly instructed in the faith of our fathers, in the traditions of our country, in the dignity of each individual man, then our power will be stronger than any weapon of destruction that man can devise. And now as to this whole gamut of Socialist infections--I say to you, the neighbors of my childhood, the sons and daughters of my native state, God has blessed us with another wonderful word--heritage. The great documents of that heritage are not from Karl Marx. They are from the Bible, the Declaration of Independence, and the Constitution of the U.S. Within them alone can the safeguards of freedom survive . . ."

Lengthening Shadows. The old man glanced up at the crowd of 10,000, and at the green cornfields stretching endlessly beyond the park. "There are voices in our country," he said, "who daily sound alarms that our civilization is on the way out. Concentrated on the difficulties of our times, they see an early and dour end for us. But civilization does not decline and fall while the people still possess dynamic creative faculties, devotion to religious faith and to liberty. The American people still possess these qualities. We are not at the bedside of a nation in death agony ... As the shadows lengthen over my years, my confidence, my hopes and dreams for my countrymen are undimmed."

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