Hoover’s Seven Forces

Herbert Hoover signed a manifesto in August 1941, which said: “Freedom in America does not depend on the outcome of struggles for material power between other nations.”

Said Herbert Hoover fortnight ago: “The American people must begin to think of the problems of peace. And it must think in a far larger frame than ever before.” In a thoughtful, 295-page book, The Problems of Lasting Peace (Doubleday Doran; $2), Hoover and veteran Diplomat Hugh Gibson provide a sense-making frame to help clarify post-war thinking.

The authors demand victory without compromise, a lasting peace founded on settlements restoring order and recovery in the world, based on some international machinery to police the world thereafter.

To them, seven “dynamic forces” spell war or peace. They hold that evil men merely light the fuses for civilization’s great explosions; the explosive makings are already there. These seven forces, say Messrs. Hoover & Gibson, will be at the coming peace table: “Ideological, economic, nationalistic, imperialistic, and militaristic pressures, and the witches of fear, hate and revenge will participate in every discussion. But on the other hand, the prayers of a stricken world for a lasting peace will echo through those halls. The seven dynamic forces have survived every crisis. They will be with us again. We know all this from the nature of the human animal, from his long toilsome experience.” To exploring and buttressing this pessimistic (or realistic) theme, they devote two-thirds of the book.

In the rest they offer no detailed plan for peace, but do try to set forth “principles which will need to be considered if peace is to be built on solid foundations.” Some of the Hoover-Gibson principles:

> “The American thesis of 1919, that peace should be built on fostering representative government, was correct, and the best foundation of hope for lasting peace.”

> “. . . The long view should be to restore international trade to free enterprise.”

> “There can be no lasting peace in Europe with a dismembered Germany. In the light of historical experience, the sound course is to give the Germans an incentive for abandoning their old ways and becoming a peaceful nation.”

> “The sole possessor or possessors of military air power could stop anyone from going to war. And international action to enforce peace would be enormously simplified.”

> “Certainly, experience shows that no nation can be punished as a whole and at the same time leave any hope of lasting peace. We can have peace or we can have revenge, but we cannot have both.”

> “Each nation should agree to refer all disputes to arbitration or to refer them to judicial settlement or to establish cooling-off periods with independent investigation.”

Thus Elder Statesman Herbert Hoover now stood committed to sweeping U.S. participation in world affairs. Columnists and reviewers, in long columns of praise, found no discrepancy between the Hoover-Gibson principles and those of Under Secretary Sumner Welles and Henry Wallace. Remarked Columnist Walter Lippmann: “This is a notable event: Governor Landon has already endorsed the Hoover-Gibson book; Mr. Willkie’s position has never been in doubt. Thus we may take great comfort in the fact that there is a high degree of unity of opinion among our political leaders.”