The Home Front:
BOHN, WILLIAM E.
THE HOME FRONT By William E. Bohn Free-Lancer in War and Peace Bernard M. Baruch, universally referred to as Barney, was born in South Carolina in 1870. This fact means two things: that...
...And so it came about in the course of time that Bernard M. Baruch, banker, was appointed to Wilson's very first preparedness commission...
...This was the beginning of a great career...
...He entered politics by accident and from the top...
...He was cordial and forthright and I was quickly impressed by his keen mind...
...Very effectively Bernard Baruch played the part of an American Winston Churchill...
...I don't know of another book out of which young people can soak up more good sense about how governments should be ran...
...Seeing how the French and British had been beaten down because of unpreparedness, he was bound to do what he could to see to it that America did not go down in the same way...
...At this point in his narrative comes the first of the character sketches which make this book a lively masterpiece: "From the moment I clasped Wilson's hand I was taken with him...
...Upon such a slender thread hangs all of the great chain of events which follows...
...The war was won and our unofficial Wall Street war-director went to Paris as a member of American Peace Conference delegation...
...Baruch went about making his contribution to the world's safety and welfare...
...By 1915, when he was 45 years old, Mr...
...This volume is a treasure-house for those interested in government...
...World War II...
...From middle life onward he has been absorbed in political matters, yet he has never run for office, never asked for votes...
...And he had definite ideas about how this was to be done...
...He gave the President and the members of the cabinet no rest...
...There he met a fellow trustee, William McCombs...
...This fact means two things: that he entered the world as a Southern gentleman...
...As a young man he seems to have had a natural gift for moneymaking...
...When I turned the last pages of this second one and finally laid it down, I realized with deep regret that I had come to the end, that there was to be no more...
...This deep friendship with Woodrow Wilson brought about the turn from private business to public welfare...
...Although I did not then realize it, I had met a man I would soon regard as one of the greatest in the world...
...Long before we entered the first great war, Barney Baruch, a mere businessman, realized that in the end America would be forced into the great struggle...
...Woodrow Wilson was ambitious for the Presidency and needed to meet men who could finance his campaign...
...To get the sort of organization which the crisis required, he had to fight business leaders, politicians—even military men...
...The man has had an amazing career and has written two amazing books about it...
...He did not foreswear the manipulations of the market—when the crash came in 1929 he very cannily protected his interests—but when World War I started and the Germans marched over the poorly prepared French and British, he began to think about what had gone wrong in Europe and from that time to this he has used his brains to serve the American people and their allies...
...In the end the necessary decisions were made and the required actions were taken...
...And yet the mere accumulation of wealth never was the be-all and end-all of his life...
...His lean, somewhat ascetic face was dominated by sparkling clear eyes...
...Baruch was named chairman of the War Industries Board...
...Baruch's first volume, My Own Story, which brought the account of his activities down to the point at which he ceased to give his chief attention to Wall Street speculation, was published four years ago...
...Baruch is afraid neither of words nor of theories...
...Here we were again, ridiculously unprepared, and again this organizing genius played his expert part—furnishing ideas, urging, organizing and finally saving the day...
...No one can scare him away from a promisingexperiment by giving it a bad name...
...He has financed so many educational projects that I propose that someone raise a fund designed to place a copy of this volume in the library of every high school in this country...
...There is something very unusual about the way in which Mr...
...with its accompaniment of neglect and amateurishness, seemed like a tiresome repetition of the first...
...and that his new book, The Public Years (Holt, $6.00), was finished and published in his 90th year...
...On the other hand, he seems to have been provided with complete protection against economic fairy tales and sacred symbols...
...he forced them to listen...
...He happened to know some Tammany men and through them was appointed a trustee of City College, a municipal institution from which he had been graduated...
...So he was brought to New York and among others who were able and willing to contribute financially was this handsome sixfooter from Wall Street...
...Baruch wanted something different, something better...
...Looking back to that first meeting, I know that I came away profoundly impressed...
Vol. 44 • January 1961 • No. 1
