The Evening Star (September 3, 1947)
Hoover reported saying U.S. erred in entering war
Believes Japs would not have attacked without provocation
By the Associated Press
The American Magazine today quoted former President Herbert Hoover as saying this country should have stayed out of World War II and ‘‘we never would have been attacked by the Japanese if we had not given them provocation.”
In an article for the September issue, Sidney Shalett said the 73-year-old Republican statesman also told him Prime Minister Stalin of Russia will make international agreements ‘‘with the full knowledge that they aren’t worth a damn if they do not work out to his advantage.”
Mr. Shalett wrote that Mr. Hoover declared in an interview that it would have been in the best interests of world peace if this country had held aloof from the recent fighting with the explanation:
“My theory is that, if we had kept out of the immediate conflict, we could have put our sword down on the table with our economic resources intact and made a decent peace when the time for peacemaking came.
“I never believed the British were in danger of defeat.
“When Germany attacked Russia, it made British victory possible.”
Mr. Shalett said the former president does not feel that either Communist world domination or another world war is inevitable, and holds the opinion that economic weapons of the United States will prevail in the end despite a “whole series of Communist revolutions now under way.”
Mr. Hoover made a post-war world survey as a special representative of President Truman. Recently he was appointed by the Republican-controlled House to serve on a 12-man commission which will consider ways of streamlining the structure of the federal government.
Mr. Shalett said he asked the former president how he would “treat with the apparent inability to pin down the Russians on any genuine cooperation for world peace,” and Mr. Hoover replied:
“Pin them down? You can’t pin them down. There isn’t any truth in them.”
The writer said Mr. Hoover outlined to him “three crusades” which have absorbed his attention since leaving office.
“The first,” Mr. Hoover said, “is anti-collectivism – anti-collectivism in all its forms.
Doesn’t expect depression
“The second was to keep us out of the war. We succeeded in that until Pearl Harbor. Up to that moment 90 per cent of the American people, senators and congressmen, would have voted against it. But then, of course, we all came in to win.
“The third is the question of relief and food for the suffering people of the world.”
Mr. Shalett said the former president told him “collectivism” was his term for the New Deal.
The writer also said Mr. Hoover told him he did not believe this nation was headed for economic depression.
“So long as the nation exports all its surplus, we can’t have a depression,” Mr. Hoover said. “It’s impossible.”
The former president was said to have added that there was danger of “overexporting” at the expense of home markets.
Mr. Hoover was quoted as saying that “I have a great deal of admiration for Mr. Truman personally, though I do not always agree with him.”