ADDRESS BY HERBERT HOOVER

A special luncheon meeting of the Commonwealth Club of California was held at the Palace Hotel, San Francisco, on Monday, October 15th, 1919, to welcome Herbert Hoover. Over 700 members and guests assembled. Justice Warren Olney, Jr., Chairman of the Club Luncheons for the October-December quarter, presided on the occasion and introduced the speaker with appropriate remarks.

Remarks by Chairman Olney

THE CHAIRMAN: Gentlemen of the Commonwealth Club and Guests: During the welter and confusion of the last four years many of us have been reminded strongly from time to time of a former great American, one of the founders of our Republic, Benjamin Franklin. We have been reminded of him as he appeared before the peoples of Europe typifying to them that new thing, the American people. We have thought of him as he appeared at the gay court of Versailles, plain and simple in garb and speech, utterly without assumption, in marked contrast to all about him and yet walking as an equal with the great ones of that day. We have been reminded of that combination of qualities which made him great, pre-eminently great, his strong practical common sense to a degree amounting to genius, combined with a broad human sympathy. We have loved to think of him as typifying the true American, the real American, plain, simple, and direct, practical in all things, his feet always on the ground, with good common sense always, and yet animated always by a human sympathy and feeling that knew no bounds. We have been reminded of this man because during the last four years we have had another American citizen standing out as one of the great figures of the world and possessing these very same qualities. We have loved to think of him as he has gone on with his difficult and arduous tasks, plain, simple, unassuming, always practical, always pre-eminent for his good common sense, his feet on the

ground, and yet fired by the divine spark of service, recognizing the call of suffering and affliction and responding to it without a thought of self. We have loved to think of him as typifying America and her genius to the world, as the embodiment of the true American, the real American. Gentlemen, we have that man with us today. I present to you-he needs no introduction-Herbert C. Hoover. (Standing applause.)

Address by Hon. Herbert C. Hoover

MR. HOOVER: Judge Olney and friends of the Commonwealth Club: I find it difficult, not only to speak publicly, but to find a sufficient number of themes not to be engaged in repetition; and I have thought perhaps that, in complying with the request of the Club for some picture of the economic and political situation in Europe, I could illustrate that subject more clearly to you, perhaps, if I gave some description of the problems surrounding one of the new states that have emerged out of this welter.

I could take any one of eighteen, and present to you much the same series of currents that confront the people of central and eastern Europe, and much the same reactions of these currents could be interpreted back upon the United States. I have chosen Poland out of the number, merely because, of the new states, Poland has more points of sentimental relation to the United States than any of the others. We have in the United States not only three millions of Poles, but we have traditions in relation to Poland not far behind those of France. If you will recollect, the very able chief engineer of the Revolutionary Army, Kosciusco, was a Pole, and a considerable portion of his staff were Poles, men who gave their all in our struggle for liberty.

The Example of Poland

Within the area now included in Poland there are some thirty-five millions of people-a new country, now ten months old, nearly onethird in population the size of the United States. This population not only includes Poles, but it includes a million Germans, some three millions of Jews, and three millions of Ruthenians or White Russians. I mention this mixture of nationalities because it is at the root of many of the political problems that Poland is faced with.

Poland has now been one hundred and fifty years under subjugation of militaristic powers. The Polish people have had no opportunity for the development of political experience and their only training as statesmen lies in political sabotage and in opposition; but this same opposition has maintained itself now over these one hundred and fifty

years, and has ripened on five occasions into bloody revolutions, until, finally, the Poles have won their independence. (Applause.)

At the time of the armistice, approximately one-third of Poland was in Austrian hands, approximately one-half in German hands, and something over a sixth in Russian hands;—and in Russian hands, it was in the hands of the Bolsheviki. At the time of the armistice it was stipulated that the Germans should surrender certain undoubted Polish territory; and there arose a man in Warsaw, Pilsudski, recently escaped from a German prison, who led a revolution in that city with a few men in support of him, and upon that foundation built the present Polish government.

America Imported Into Poland

Shortly after Pilsudski's revolution, Paderewksi returned to Poland from his unceasing efforts of twenty-five years in behalf of Polish independence. Paderewski imported into Poland America,-America in ideals, America in administrative capacity, America in intelligence, and America in spirit. (Applause.) At the day of the establishment of the new government, a survey of the country would have disclosed that all of it had been ravaged by four separate invasions, and parts of it by seven invasions; that the destruction of property and civilian life in Poland was greater than all the destruction of property and life on the western front. Three to four million Poles had died of starvation during the period of the war. The tactics of the Russian retreat of 1916 were an endeavor to repeat the tactics of the old retreat before Napoleon. The systematic destruction of every house and product over an area one hundred and fifty miles wide and one thousand miles long was carried out, and the entire population was driven before the retreating Russian army. In the course of that retreat the Russians found they could not move fast enough with that enormous body of civilians ahead of them. The civilians were ruthlessly thrown off the roads, the Russian army passed through, to be followed by the German army, and thus from two to three millions of people were displaced one hundred and fifty miles from their homes, with every habitation and every atom of food destroyed behind them, and a large part were left to die.

Add to this the steady degeneration of agriculture in other regions during the whole period of five years, the constant abstraction by the enemy of what small surplus of food was produced in the most productive sections. Add again the destruction of the agricultural implements and of homes in battle areas, and you have no wonder that Poland at the time of the armistice was confronted with absolute starvation.

Establishing a New Government

The government established itself without a penny in the treasury, with a population incapable of paying taxes, with the necessity of restoring order from the already growing Bolshevik and German propaganda, creating an army, creating all the ordinary functions of government. And, to add to the other problems, Poland was swept by an epidemic of typhus.

The Poles set about the creation of ministries of foreign affairs, of war, of food, of finance, of railways, of education, of agriculture, and of home affairs, the setting up of local government. And, finally, last March, within three months of the time that they had installed their government, Paderewski assembled a general election with universal franchise and elected a congress, and from that moment that government has ruled as responsible to the Diet; and thus was estab lished a government for the people and by the people in a country that had known no government for one hundred and fifty years but the government of military arms. (Applause.)

The first problem for Poland was to undermine anarchy by the importation of food. That was undertaken by the United States. The first food supply to Poland arrived about the end of January, and from that time until the harvest the American people supported the population of Poland. Not only did that assistance take the form of food supply, but it took the form of advisers to their government in the construction of the different departments of government, the re-organization of their railways, the finding of rolling stock for their railways, boats for canals; it took the form of the re-establishment of communication systems, until Poland has grown up, not only under the inspiration of Paderewski and his American ideals, but directly under the inspiration of twenty individual Americans of an ability and education of which every one of us can be proud. (Applause.)

Feeding the Children

In the course of time the food administration in Poland discovered weaknesses in the food situation that could only be met outside of governmental measures. One of the early problems of Poland was the children. Through the denudation of cattle and the shortage in feed, milk had ceased to be a current commodity in the cities. The proportion of child life in Poland was far below the normal in such a population. The remaining children, especially those of the poor, were under-nourished, and suffering from all the diseases known to malnutrition. There was but one solution and that was to produce food and milk and direct it toward the under-nourished. The Ameri