AN AMERICAN EPIC

This is the fourth and final volume in the former president's account of America's contributions to those left destitute by the ravages of total war. The period dealt with is the past 24 years; when the reader reflects that the first three volumes together only covered 11 years, he may assay the distribution of Mr. Hoover's attention. Since Hoover was at the head of U.S. efforts of this sort during both periods, perhaps we must abide by his judgment in the matter -- and this despite his description of conditions following World War II as ""the greatest famine in all history."" President, Truman enlisted his services early in 1945; and Mr. Hoover immediately brought his administrative talents to bear upon the enormous problems of starvation, lack of shelter and clothing, relief transport, and economic dislocation. His description here is mainly country by country, and is taken with very little evision or even much reorganization from the original documents in the hands of the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution, and Peace. As he asserts, this work contains the record of many actions unique in the written history of the world."" We may regret that it is the most bare, terse, and undramatic record of those actions ima-nable but still the contribution is both unique and permanent.