Good Eyes

Amazing how sharp a pair of youthful eyes can be!

Recently, when going through the photographs in the Nicolas de Basily papers at Hoover for a project, I came across a small photo depicting a nondescript three-story brick building.

I did a double take because I had just read an article by de Basily’s widow, Lascelle Meserve de Basily, on the 1920 Allied Powers conference in Spa. The Russian White government in Southern Russia of General Vrangel’ (whose collection we also have at Hoover) had sent a delegation to Spa in hopes of securing official recognition from France and Great Britain. De Basily, a Russian diplomat who had drafted the abdication statement of Tsar Nicolas II (all five drafts of which are in his collection), was part of that delegation, which was headed by Petr Struve, foreign affairs minister of the Vrangel’ government, yet another major figure of that period in Russian history whose papers are housed at Hoover. As we know, no recognition came forth and the Bolsheviks ultimately prevailed throughout Russia.

So where do the eyes come in? In her article, Mrs. de Basily (who accompanied her husband on the mission) explains that, due to their late arrival in Spa, there were no hotel rooms to be had, so they were forced to find lodgings on the outskirts—in “a tiny apartment on the first floor of a modest house… . On the ground floor was a humble grocery shop.”

Could the brick building I was staring at be that modest house? Why else would such an innocuous-looking photo be in the collection? Plus, there were indeed some stores on the ground floor, though I couldn’t decipher the signs above them. I grabbed a magnifying glass but still couldn’t read the tiny letters. So I asked one of our young staff members, handing her the magnifying glass, if she could figure something out. Squinting, she said, “Well, let’s see. In one of the signs, I think it’s E… P… I...” I stopped her in her tracks and said, excitedly, “EPICERIE, French for grocery store!”

That was it, that was the épicerie diplomatique (as Struve and Basily called their quarters) where Basily, on Saturday, July 17, 1920, after the mission ended in failure, said to his wife, “This is the definite end of Imperial Russia—in a grocery shop.”

Nikolaĭ Aleksandrovich Bazili papers, Photo File, Envelope A, Hoover Institution Archives

Connections

The Hare with Amber Eyes: A Family’s Century of Art and Loss, by Edmund de Waal, is a magnificent book about his amazing family, the Ephrussis. From the patriarch’s flourishing business in Odessa in the 1850s to the fortunes made by his descendants in Vienna and Paris; from the family’s involvement in the art world to the tragic events after Hitler annexed Austria in 1938 and then Czechoslovakia, the author re-creates the lives of his ancestors through a collection of 264 netsuke acquired by his great-granduncle in Paris in the late nineteenth century, which de Waal eventually inherited.

So often when I read books or articles about the tumultuous past century, I find a reference to someone whose papers we have in the Hoover Archives—in this case, Eric Voegelin, an Austrian political scientist who, like de Waal’s great-grandparents, escaped Vienna in 1938, just in the nick of time. They were helped by their daughter, Elisabeth de Waal, the author’s grandmother. A lawyer and a poet (she carried on an intense and extensive correspondence with Rainer Maria Rilke in the 1920s that was published in full in 1997 in the Jahrbuch der deutschen Schillergesellschaft), she had married a Dutch man and was thus able to enter Austria in 1938 on her Dutch passport—a courageous move considering the family’s Jewish origins. She had met Voegelin during her law studies in Vienna, and their friendship deepened in their respective exiles—hers in England and his in America.

When I saw Voegelin mentioned in the book, I promptly checked the finding aid for his papers in our archives, which, coincidentally, I had prepared many years ago. Sure enough, there was her name in the correspondence series: Elisabeth de Waal—forty-five letters sent to Voegelin between 1938 and 1976 and seven carbon copies of Voegelin’s letters to her.

That was exciting enough, but then came the best part. Prompted by this connection to our holdings, I decided to e-mail the author to tell him how much I loved his book and to ask whether he knew of the existence of his grandmother’s letters in our Voegelin collection. Not only did he reply immediately in the kindest way, but he offered to send us twelve letters from Voegelin to his grandmother, stating that his family would be honored to have them housed at Hoover, where they would complement the correspondence we already had.

So the next time you read something that catches your attention about a person or event in the twentieth (and increasingly twenty-first) century, chances are we have collections concerning them in our archives or books in our library. Come and visit us!

And why not write to the author of the book or article you read? You might be happily surprised, as I was.

Eric Voegelin, August 1966, Photo File A, Eric Voegelin papers, Hoover Institution Archives

Hugh Gibson’s diaries documenting Herbert Hoover’s 1946–47 food mission are now available online

With the tragic earthquakes in Haiti and Chile earlier this year, and the recent floods in Pakistan, we are reminded once again of the primacy of food in relief operations for people in distress, whether suffering from natural or man-made catastrophes.

Herbert Hoover spent a great deal of his life organizing such relief, feeding millions of people during and after World War I in more than twenty countries. Then again, after World War II, he coordinated a worldwide effort to fight the famine that was threatening close to a billion people. No wonder his legacy is that of a great humanitarian and master of efficiency.

Hugh Gibson, a U.S. diplomat whose papers are housed in the Hoover Archives, was a friend of Hoover’s and his right-hand man on that postwar food mission. He kept a daily journal, covering both the whirlwind tour of nearly forty countries in the spring of 1946 and a subsequent return trip to Europe in February 1947. These diaries (mentioned in my blog of October 6, 2009) have now been digitized and are available online. Beyond the focus on food, these fascinating and lively diaries cover a wide range of political and social issues. In the words of his son, Michael Gibson, “The result is a dizzying cross-section of the world just one year after the war ended.”

Gibson often relates Hoover’s state of mind and some of his conversations with various heads of state and did, on occasion, paste newspaper clippings into his diary, such as the account of Hoover’s address at the luncheon in Lima hosted by the president of Peru on June 2, 1946. In Hoover’s stirring words:

“This world crisis appeared last March. At that time, President Truman did me the honor to ask for my collaboration in the great crisis that faced mankind. As my first duty, I have journeyed over the world to evaluate the minimum needs of the great famine areas and to discover such additional food resources as possible. I have also endeavored to coordinate and bring about as great a solidarity as possible of the nations to meet this crisis. I was more than glad to undertake this effort, in order to contribute what experience I had gained as the head of the organization which fought the great famine after the first World War. But more than all that, especially did I desire that in this tremendous crisis of human life, there should be a demonstration to my countrymen that, no matter what our other differences in views might be in our opposite political parties, there could be no division of effort in the problem which revolved around the saving of human life, and of civilization itself….

“Hunger today hangs over the homes of more than 800,000,000 people—over one-third of the people of the world.

“…we are not alone faced with hunger, but we are faced with the problem of mass starvation. And by that term I mean whole villages—whole cities—and even whole nations—might be condemned to death did we not make our every effort. So far, we have prevented mass starvation….

“And may I repeat a statement which I have made elsewhere: ‘The saving of these human lives is far more than an economic necessity to the recovery of the world. It is more than the only path to order, to stability and to peace. Such action marks the return of the lamp of compassion to the world. And that is a part of the moral and spiritual reconstruction of the world.’”

For more speeches given by Hoover during the food mission, see his memoirs, An American Epic (volume IV) and his Addresses upon the American Road, 1945–1948 (both available in the Hoover Library and Archives reading rooms), as well as his papers in the Hoover Archives and at the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library in West Branch, Iowa.

And we have several other collections with material relating to this amazing food mission. Contact us or come to the Archives reading room and ask our friendly staff for assistance!

Hugh Gibson in the devastated Warsaw Ghetto, March 29, 1946. (Courtesy of Michael Gibson)

An Impressive Mission

Who’d think there’d be a connection between Julia Child and Herbert Hoover? Indeed, after seeing the summer hit Julie & Julia (loved it, saw it twice), I plunged into Child’s memoirs, My Life in France, in which she recalled that Hoover had “impressed everyone on a recent swing through Europe.”

The “swing” referred to was the so-called food mission around the world that President Truman had asked Hoover to undertake in 1946 and 1947. The goal was to assess which, among the forty or so countries visited on four continents, suffered most from hunger and which could most contribute to alleviating it. Having saved millions of lives during and after World War I through his humanitarian relief organizations (whose records are housed at the Hoover Archives), Hoover was the perfect choice.

His closest associate on the tour was Hugh Gibson, a U.S. diplomat who had served in many posts during the 1920s and 1930s. His papers are also housed here, including his daily diary of that mission—a fascinating account of conditions on the ground, heads of state they met, geostrategic discussions, and so forth. Despite the tragic subject of war devastation and ensuing hunger, Gibson infuses his comments about the trip with humor and wit, so it is not only very informative but funny as well. We’re in the process of scanning the diary and will post it on our website, so stay tuned.

In the meantime, you can see Gibson’s diary in the archives reading room, as well, of course, as Herbert Hoover’s own papers on the subject.

Hugh Gibson and Herbert Hoover disembark from the "Faithful Cow" during their international food mission, undertaken at the request of President Truman. Photo courtesy of Michael Gibson.