"Hoover's Work Toward World Peace is Monumental"--Sullivan

In President Hoover's method of approach to this problem there is no sign that he is conscious of attacking the problem from a new point of view; indeed, I am quite sure he has no such consciousness, nor any other from of self-consciousness about his relation to it. Yet a student examining the steps taken by the President and the comparatively small number of his public utterances on this subject can find evidence of what is in fact the case, namely, a man with scientific and engineering training approaching the problem of increasing the assurance of peace; a mind of extraordinary power and penetration focussing itself, in the manner which is its normal lifetime habit, on the work of analyzing the problem in a scientific spirit, identifying the forces that make for peace and those that make for war, and estimating how the former may be so stimulated and directed as to prevail over the latter--in short, how to bring it about that the forces making for peace shall prevail over those making for war.

A New Concept

Evidence of this scientific approach is to be found in the passages of Mr. Hoover's Armistice Day speech which treat of the nature of peace. His treatment is not direct, for he is not aware that he is making a new definition of peace, or any definition of it. His treatment is allusive; his mind is expressing itself on a different aspect of the subject. Between the lines, however, one can recognize a conception unlike the one ordinarily in the minds of statesmen, and certainly differentiated from the average man's conception. Mr. Hoover's conception, by the very nature of the subject, is not easy to put in words. One can approach his definition by stating its opposite. The common assumption is that peace is a status, or that it is a static thing. Among persons chiefly sentimental, this conception is universal. They think of peace as a condition, a Nirvana. They think "Let us have peace, and then we can go about our business in peace."

The Scientific Approach

But in the conception underlying Mr. Hoover's approach (I quote the words from his speech of November 11), "peace is not a static thing." It is a dynamic thing, having sometimes greater momentum, sometimes less; sometimes it is more capable of matching the forces making for war, sometimes less. Peace is at once a resultant of forces and itself a force. Being a force, it permits no Nirvana-like rest to those who enjoy it or cherish it, or are responsible for it; it must be continuously fed, from time to time stimulated; must at all times be the object or fostering concern. Peace, in short, in Mr. Hoover's conception, must be the beneficiary of an activity and of an expenditure of care and energy which is the equivalent of what we call, in the case of war, preparedness. This conception of peace was more likely to occur to a man of science than to a statesman of the more usual type of training and experience; this kind of directive fostering of peace is more likely to be practised by an engineer.

That a statesman's approach to the problem of peace and war is qualified, beneficially or otherwise as may be, by his individual experience, is illustrated by Mr. Hoover's reference to freedom of the seas in his Armistice Day speech. For what is commonly meant by freedom of the seas, Mr. Hoover has approval, as most statesmen have. On one point, within the broader field he is specific, and his being specific arises both from his habit of thinking in terms of forces and from his direct experience with food during the Great War.

Immunity for Neutrals

The broad question of freedom of the seas is mainly the question of the rights of neutral ships during war. President Hoover has suggested, as an immediate and concrete step, that neutral ships carrying food for civilian populations, and food only, shall be given the same immunity now enjoyed by hospital ships. The more obvious argument for this step is mercy, humanity. It is seen in terms of mercy only, by most of those who advocate it or discuss it.

Make Food Non-Contraband

But the engineer sees also an even more fundamental argument. The condition in which food is contraband is one of those underlying forces that make for war. It makes for war not only among nations, like Great Britain, whose geographic and economic conditions leave them subject to suffering from the cutting off of food in case of war. (This condition is the greatest one cause of Great Britain's insistence upon large naval armament, is the greatest one cause leading many British statesmen to feel they must preserve in their people a readiness for war, a martial spirit, year in and year out, in peace time as well as war time). Treating food as a contraband makes for war also among nations likely to be in the business of supplying food; the challenging and invading of what we deemed our rights as a neutral shipper caused President Wilson in 1916 to make a plea for "incomparably the greatest navy in the world." Had ships carrying food then enjoyed the same immunity as hospital ships, it is possible that the area of the Great War might have been more circumscribed. Every nation whose economic status includes the export of foodstuffs, is likely to build naval armament for the purpose of keeping the sea open for its food-carrying ships.

In short, treating food as contraband is seen by President Hoover as an active force working for war; treating food for civilian populations as immune is suggested by him as a force working for peace, as a new force that would neutralize one of the forces of war. Vision of the problem in terms of forces is characteristic.

As New as Science

In my own reflections it has seemed that the novelty and importance of the American President's approach to the problem of war and peace lies not in the striking quality of one of his proposals that happens to be dramatic. Not does it lie in any other one of his specific proposals. It inheres rather in the fundamental quality out of which these specific proposals emerge; it lies in the method of approach, the method of a man who came to statesmanship after an education mainly in the field of modern science, and after an experience mainly in a field that brought him in contact with natural forces. Looked upon in this way, President Hoover's Armistice Day speech, and the whole of his course about peace, may possibly be regarded as the most far-reaching, not only since the Pact of Paris, but since a much earlier date. It is a new way of thinking about war and peace, a new approach to the problem, an approach which is as new as modern science is new.

EDITOR'S NOTE

President Hoover, in his approach to the problem of World peace, is employing scientific method, says Mark Sullivan '00, noted journalist who has been elected an Overseer of Harvard University for the year 1934. In an article which was published in the winter number of "The Yale Review", Sullivan defines President Hoover's theory of peace and shows that the method of Preserving peace advocated by the President is practically the opposite of the common conception of the means for maintaining peace.