epends. This actual fact Hoover always clearly
saw; but the thing that those close to him saw quite as clearly was that
this alone accounted for but a small part of his intensive attention to
the children.

It is, then, neither any sad experience in his own life, nor any
sociologic or biologic understanding of the hard facts of human
existence and racial persistence, that does much to explain his
particular devotion to the health and comfort of the millions of
suffering children in Europe. The explanation lies simply, although
mysteriously, in his own personality. I say mysteriously, for, despite
all the wonderful new knowledge of heredity that we have gained since
the beginning of the twentieth century, the way by which any of us comes
to be just the sort of man he is is still mostly mystery. Herbert Hoover
is simply a kind of man who, when brought by circumstances face to face
with the distress of a people, is especially deeply touched by the
distress of the children, and is impelled by this to use all of his
intelligence and energy to relieve this distress. What we can know of
his inheritance and early environment may indeed reveal a little
something of why he is this kind of man. But it certainly will not
reveal the whole explanation.

Herbert Hoover, or, to give him for once his full name, Herbert Clark
Hoover, was born on August 10, 1874, in a small Quaker community of
Iowa which composed, at the time of his birth, most of the village of
West Branch in that state. That is, he usually says that he was born on
August 10, but sometimes he says that this important day was August 11.
He seems to slide his birthday back and forth to suit the convenience of
his family when they wish to celebrate it. He does this on the basis of
the fact that when, in the midst of the general family excitement in the
middle of the night of August 10-11, one of the busy Quaker aunts
present bethought herself, for the sake of getting things straight in
the family Bible, to say: "Oh, doctor, just how long ago was it that
baby was born?" she got the following answer, "Just as near an hour ago
as I can guess it." Thereupon she looked at the clock on the wall, and
the doctor looked at his watch, and both found it exactly one o'clock of
an important new morning!

Herbert's Quaker father, Jesse Clark Hoover, died in 1880, and his
Quaker mother, Hulda Minthorn, in 1884. The father had had the simple
education of a small Quaker college and was,