Harry and Herbert

Richard Norton Smith on a presidential friendship. An excerpt:

Nearly one and a half centuries after the second president undertook to explain himself to the third, Herbert Hoover opened his heart to a most unlikely correspondent. "Yours has been a friendship which has reached deeper into my life than you know," he told Harry Truman in December 1962. I gave up a successful profession in 1914 to enter public service. I served through the First World War and after for a total of about 18 years. When the attack on Pearl Harbor came, I at once supported the President and offered to serve in any useful capacity. Because of my various experiences . . . I thought my services might again be useful, however there was no response. My activities in the Second World War were limited to frequent requests from Congressional committees. When you came to the White House, Hoover continued, "within a month you opened a door to me to the only profession I know, public service, and you undid some disgraceful action that had been taken in prior years."