Herbert Hoover and World Peace 0761851976, 9780761851974

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HERBERT HOOVER AND WORLD PEACE

Edited by Lee Nash



Copyright © 2010 by University Press of America,® Inc. 4501 Forbes Boulevard Suite 200 Lanham, Maryland 20706 UPA Acquisitions Department (301) 459-3366 Estover Road Plymouth PL6 7PY United Kingdom All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America British Library Cataloging in Publication Information Available Library of Congress Control Number: 2010926178 ISBN: 978-0-7618-5197-4 (paperback : alk. paper) The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992

For Grayce Lover of Peace

CONTENTS



Acknowledgments



Contributors



Introduction

1

Quaker President Herbert C. Hoover and American Foreign Policy Martin L. Fausold

2

Herbert Hoover and the League of Nations Clifford R. Lovin

3

“A Little of the Road to Peace”: Herbert Hoover and the World Court Michael Dunne

4

Herbert Hoover and the Struggle for European Economic Recovery in the 1920s Robert H. Van Meter

5

Nonintervention, Nonrecognition, and Food: Herbert Hoover’s Russian Policy, 1917-1925 Benjamin D. Rhodes

6

Herbert Hoover’s Military Policy John R. M. Wilson

7

Blessed are the Peacemakers: The Hoover-Gibson Collaboration Susan Estabrook Kennedy

8

Herbert Hoover and the Great Debates Over Foreign Policy, 1940-1941 and 1950-1951 Gary Dean Best

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I am pleased to acknowledge the careful research and patient cooperation of each contributor, the substantive encouragement of this publication by Provost Patrick Allen and George Fox University, and the superb work of my assistant, Kati Voth.

CONTRIBUTORS Gary Dean Best, Professor of History, University of Hawaii, Hilo. Visiting professor, Sophi University, Japan. Ph.D., University of Hawaii. Fulbright Scholar. Author of The Politics of American Individualism: Herbert Hoover in Transition, 1918-1921 (Westport, CT, 1975); and Herbert Hoover: The Postpresidential Years, 1933-1964, 2 volumes (Stanford, CA, 1983). Michael C. G. Dunne, Professor of American Studies Emeritus, University of Sussex; D.Phil., University of Sussex; Fulbright Scholar, University of California, Berkeley; formerly Fellow, European Studies Centre, Oxford University; currently Visiting Professor, St Cross College, Oxford University, and Research Fellow, Centre of Latin American Studies and Fellow of Clare Hall, Cambridge University. Author of The United States and the World Court, 1920-1935 (New York, 1988). Martin L. Fausold, Distinguished Service Professor of American History, State University of New York, Geneseo, deceased. Ph.D., Syracuse University. Author of The Presidency of Herbert C. Hoover (Lincoln, NE, 1984). Susan Estabrook Kennedy, Professor of History, Virginia Commonwealth University, deceased. Ph.D., Columbia University. Guggenheim Fellow. Author of The Banking Crisis of 1933 (Lexington, KY, 1973). Clifford R. Lovin, Professor of History Emeritus, Western Carolina University. Ph.D., University of North Carolina. Danforth Associate. Author of A School for Diplomats: The Paris Peace Conference of 1919 (Lanham, MD, 1997). Benjamin D. Rhodes, Professor of History Emeritus, University of Wisconsin, Whitewater. Ph.D., University of Colorado. Author of The Anglo-American Winter War with Russia, 1918-1919 (Westport, CT, 1988). Robert H. Van Meter, Director, University Without Walls; Lecturer in Government, Skidmore College, retired. Ph.D., University of Wisconsin. Author of essays and reviews on diplomatic history. John R. M. Wilson, Professor of History, Vanguard University. Ph.D., Northwestern University. Danforth Associate. Author of Herbert Hoover and the Armed Forces (New York, 1993).

INTRODUCTION Herbert Hoover gave much attention throughout his long life to issues of peace and war. He studied peace, peacemaking, and peacekeeping under Quaker auspices in youth, and while he did not become a pacifist, this early orientation remained with him. These values were enhanced by contrast when at 26 with his young wife he experienced at first hand the terrors of a shooting war in Tientsen, China, with Boxer rebels intent on killing all aliens. He gave leadership in organizing defenses, provisioning defenders, and fighting fires. He was personally under much hostile small-arms fire, standing next to men who were shot, and five artillery shells struck the Hoover home. Lou Hoover organized a staff to care for the wounded in a makeshift hospital, and her bicycle received a bullet in the rear tire as she rode to work one day. Hoover learned the varied miseries that war visits upon civilians, especially children, in his 27 months of hands-on direction of the Commission for Relief in Belgium, 1914-1917. Such vivid evidence multiplied during his American Relief Administration work in central and eastern Europe 1918-1923, as well as during his three-month, 51,000-mile trip through Europe and Asia in 1946 to assess postwar economic disruption and food relief needs for President Truman. He understood well the bitter, personal costs of war. Hoover the fabled Great Engineer, the technocrat, is less recognized for his remarkable cultural erudition, enhanced by 20 years of international experience and exposure on four continents outside North America. His work brought him into sustained contact with high governmental officials in many lands, and such contacts were also an essential dimension of his food relief work later. Much of his detailed knowledge of the cultures, histories, and governance of other lands was the fruit of voracious reading during the imposed leisure of a total of over two years of sea travel as he circled the globe five times besides much other intercontinental travel. It was his version of graduate studies. In the context of Hoover’s unwavering American patriotism he developed an informed respect for other peoples and cultures, and thoughtful perspectives on the ruinous roles of warfare in world history. He has no near rival among the other 42 American presidents for international exposure and experience in their pre-presidential years. This background uniquely informed Hoover’s foreign policy and his peace-oriented philosophy of international affairs. Hoover opposed American entry into World War I until the last, primarily because he was certain that involvement would entangle the U.S. in the complex selfishness of allied war aims. After entry, he supported the war effort by accepting appointment in Wilson’s War Cabinet as Food Administrator, further deepening his experience with the economics of war. President Wilson found Hoover’s expertise in European economics and his gift for analysis helpful as he negotiated issues at the Peace Conference at Paris. While they usually agreed, where they did not Hoover is often considered by both contemporaries and historians to have been the wiser. Hoover opposed the harsh German reparations that Wilson finally supported. Later Hoover tried (unsuccessfully) to persuade Wilson to accept revisions of the League of Nations advocated by influential senators, in order to win Senate approval of the Treaty of

Versailles and the League. Hoover’s most dramatic departure from previous American foreign policy is seen in his six-week goodwill tour of ten Latin American countries after his election and before his inauguration as President. “I would wish,” he said in Honduras, his first stop, “to symbolize the friendly visit of one good neighbor to another.” He rejected Theodore Roosevelt’s “Corollary” to the Monroe Doctrine that justified the use of American power to quell unrest and impose order on struggling Latin American republics. He denounced Taft’s “dollar diplomacy,” as a misalliance between American business and the State Department. He reversed Wilson’s policy of intervention, withdrawing U.S. troops from Nicaragua, and planning the same for Haiti. The largest section of Herbert Hoover’s Inaugural Address of March 4, 1929, which features sub-heads, falls under “World Peace.” He started by rejecting any sort of economic or territorial imperialism for America, and gave his idealism full play: We not only desire peace with the world, but to see peace maintained throughout the world. We wish to advance the reign of Justice and reason toward the extinction of force.

Hoover affirmed “instrumentalities for pacific settlement of controversies between nations,” especially the Permanent Court of International Justice (popularly called the “World Court”). He reported his tour of “our sister Republics of the Western Hemisphere,” characterizing his good neighbor policy as a natural expression of the “bonds of sympathy and common interest” that the U.S. shared with those nations. With Wilsonian echoes, Hoover acknowledged the solemn obligation of humanity’s debt to the millions of World War dead, declaring “Surely civilization is old enough, surely mankind is mature enough so that we ought in our own lifetime to find a way to permanent peace.” Hoover seldom permitted himself such soaring rhetoric, and when he did it signaled conviction rather than hyperbole. He made earnest efforts as president to conceptualize and follow a peace-oriented philosophy of international relations. The first of four chapters on “Foreign Affairs—1929-1933” in the second volume of his Memoirs is entitled “General Peace Policies.” Hoover’s first sentence in that chapter sets the tone: “My ambition in our foreign policies was to lead the United States in full cooperation with world moral forces to preserve peace.” He understood that such a goal was particularly supported by representative governments, and he acted to modify America’s prevailing isolationist sentiment, hoping his country could lead democratic nations in establishing “more solid foundations of peace,” through efforts such as the following: —participation in World Court pacific efforts (this failed to pass the Senate); —affirming arbitration and conciliation agreements (The U.S. signed treaties of arbitration with 25 nations during the Hoover administration, treaties of conciliation with 17); —promoting naval and land arms agreements among nations (the Naval Limitation Treaty of 1930 was the primary achievement in this field); —favoring a moratorium on intergovernmental debts, including war debts; —proposing an international conference to stabilize currencies and reduce trade barriers (while the later Hawley-Smoot Tariff compromised this proposal, its rider enabling the executive to make reciprocal agreements to lower tariffs was important to Hoover).

Even before the United States was drawn into World War II by the attack on Pearl Harbor, Hoover saw his duty clear to partner with his old friend Hugh Gibson and write the definitive manual on how to avoid the peacemaking mistakes of World War I when the current conflict was over. Five months of strenuous daily effort, and The Problems of Lasting Peace was published in May, 1942. It was the first of several books on the subject, and probably the most substantive. Certainly no clearer, more comprehensive, more profound, nor more practical writing promoting peace among nations ever came from an American president before nor since. Set in the broad context of world history and of measured explanations of the causes of war, the book settles down on 50 numbered recommendations for winning the peace. Hoover’s broad experience and deep expertise in international economics and finance contributed significantly to his thinking on war and peace. “The primary cause of the Great Depression,” he wrote in his Memoirs, “was the war of 1914-1918,” and he is supported in this judgment by leading historians. “Economic Pressures” constitute one of the “Seven Dynamic Forces” that make for peace and war as discussed in The Problems of Lasting Peace. These factors were so central to Hoover’s thinking that he boldly added “Economic Freedom” to FDR’s summary of American war aims, the famous “Four Freedoms” of Speech, of Worship, from Want, and from Fear. Economic implications are defined and discussed at length in the book, and form the basis of no less than 13 of its 50 proposals. In his many opportunities to influence the economic dimensions of American foreign policy as advisor to three presidents, as Secretary of Commerce, and as president, Hoover was always sensitive to the ways in which such policy could encourage peace among nations. Hoover’s final major contribution to American peacekeeping appears in his studied alternative to American Cold War policy in the 1950s. That alternative represents remarkable continuity with the non-coercive, non-interventionist philosophy of American defense that he had held and promoted since the 1920s. Articulated in its general outlines before the Korean War began, Hoover’s alternative was presented most fully in the early months of that conflict in a radio address on December 20, 1950, developed further in a follow-up on February 8, 1951. Hoover saw ideal American defense strategy as dependent primarily on air and naval power, and he advocated a restricted defense perimeter encompassing the western hemisphere, plus the British Isles, Japan, Taiwan, and The Philippines. Maximum pressure on European nations to provide for their own defense would reduce, and, he hoped, replace American NATO involvement. Nuclear weapons, he was sure, made no practical contribution to American strategy beyond the obvious deterrent effect of the possibility of mutual destruction. He had been from the beginning a strong if quiet critic of the decision to drop two atomic bombs on Japanese civilians, certain (along with other such critics including Generals Eisenhower and MacArthur) that those acts were unnecessary to ensure early surrender, and that it was a tragic anomaly for humane America to be first among nations to trigger the horrors of atomic warfare. Hoover definitely lost the “Great Debate” on Cold War policy touched off by his 1950 address. But the prevailing bipartisan aggressive, interventionist, wide-perimeter defense strategy worked out so badly with its two Asian wars that alternatives analogous to Hoover’s have a growing corps of supporters in the continuing historical debate. When the Vietnam War was finally lost, at great cost in human life and to the national psyche, American policy seemed

to many to be dramatically flawed. And when the U.S.S.R. finally succumbed from its intrinsic weaknesses just as Hoover had often predicted it would, historical support for his alternative grew. It is not permitted for us to know the mysteries of the might-have-been. But the full story of American choices in the Cold War highlights the attractions of Hoover’s settled views: economic self-sufficiency, strong sea/air hemispheric defense, and realistically limited objectives, so blended, he believed, as to give peaceful coexistence a chance. One of several factors that assure Hoover of a permanent presence in America’s public memory is the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution, and Peace founded in 1919 and located at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California. As Hoover pondered the causes of the war during his Belgian relief work, he decided to gather as many relevant public and private historical sources as possible from all over Europe. He hired “professional collectors” in the capitols of all the warring nations to collect such materials and hold them until after the war. Less than a week after the Armistice, Hoover with key assistants left for Europe, charged with responsibilities to manage food distribution to 21 famine-stricken nations pending the first peacetime harvest of 1919. His 12- to 18-hour workdays and seven-day weeks over the next eleven months soon included assisting President Wilson at Versailles, and he continued to seek and preserve historical materials. He personally financed this ambitious project with a $50,000 gift ($600,000 in today’s Consumer Price Index values), and brought the head of the Stanford history department to Europe to direct proceedings. General Pershing added further professional quality to the effort by assigning 15 former history professors from his occupation troops to travel to European capitols in search of sources. These resourceful collectors were particularly successful in obtaining papers of the Russian government and its officials that related to the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. The directors of the many food distribution centers had the additional responsibility to be on the lookout for data and documents, and hundreds of cartons of materials were sent to Stanford’s “War Library,” as it was initially called, on empty ships that had brought food to Europe. All this resulted in the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution, and Peace becoming a leading center for historical research on the Great War and its sequels. Hoover’s central purpose was to enable future scholars to understand at greater depth the causes of wars and revolutions, and the neglected alternatives statesmen could have chosen to avoid those cataclysms. Hoover wrote the last version of the mission statement for his Institution in 1959, five years before his death, and it includes these peace-related goals: The overall mission of this Institution is, from its records, to recall the voice of experience against the making of war, and by the study of these records and their publication, to recall man’s endeavors to make and preserve peace, and to sustain for America the safeguards of the American way of life. This Institution is not, and must not be, a mere library. But with these purposes as its goal, the Institution itself must constantly and dynamically point to the road to peace, to personal freedom, and to the safeguards of the American system.

This mission statement still appears on the Hoover Institution website. The eight essays that follow were presented at the biennial Herbert Hoover Symposia sponsored by George Fox University in Newberg, Oregon since 1977, whose academy young Bert Hoover attended 1885-88. These essays, by leading authorities, trace the sources of Hoover’s commitment to world peace, the development of that commitment into a mature philosophy, and a selection of the varied ways in which he attempted to implement it as

humanitarian, advisor, cabinet member, president, and citizen. This is not the book that recounts the full, ordered story of Herbert Hoover and world peace, though its contributors hope it will help inspire the appropriate scholar to write that book. Yet we do see here symbolic episodes, creative initiatives, and focused energies (not all successful); fruits of Hoover’s steady, hopeful vision for peace among nations. Lee Nash George Fox University

1

Quaker President Herbert C. Hoover and American Foreign Policy

Martin L. Fausold

For a half-century after his presidency, Hoover’s foreign policy was generally explained as a combination of the influence of Quaker pacifism, the rising tide of depression, and the overriding strength of his secretary of state, Henry L. Stimson. From such assumptions it seemed to follow that Hoover’s Quakerism inclined the president toward isolationism; that the depression so absorbed him that he gave foreign policy only limited attention, and that Stimson usually made foreign policy. Such conclusions are simplistic generalities that miss the mark widely. * * * A word about Hoover’s Quakerism as a backdrop to his foreign policy. “I come of Quaker stock,” he declared on the eve of his presidency.1 These five words seemed to bespeak a lifetime of endless demands upon him. A Washington neighbor reported him as having said, prior to entering the White House: A philosophy of rules telling you what to do in given circumstances is a philosophy which you can sometimes escape from because, if circumstances arise which are not among the given circumstances, then there are no rules, and you can do as you like. But if your people make you believe that the ‘Inner Light’ would light everything, then you keep trying to expand that ‘Light’ to cover every new circumstance that happens and every new problem that arises, and you are never through. You keep getting new rules, from inside, all the time.2

The intensity of Quakerism is frequently in proportion to the strengthening of the faith through generations of a Friends family. In Herbert Hoover’s case, the family tradition of the religion was unusual. His ancestor Andrew Hoover (Huber) arrived in Philadelphia in 1738 and abandoned his Lutheran heritage in favor of William Penn’s religion—the Society of Friends. Thus began a succession of very prominent Quaker leaders, through four generations, many of them ministers. The Quaker credentials on Hoover’s maternal side are comparable, also through many generations, down to his mother, Huldah, a Quaker minister who succumbed to pneumonia when Herbert was nine years of age. The children were then separated and cared for by Quaker kin in various places. Between this time and Herbert’s entrance into Stanford University, he was raised by his uncle, Henry John Minthorn, a country doctor in a Quaker settlement in Newberg, Oregon. The most fundamental principle of Quakerism throughout its history has been the “Inner Light,” which Hoover mentioned to that Washington neighbor. It probably makes Quakerism the most individualistic of all Christian religions, perhaps of all Western religions. Every man possesses the “Inner Light.” Quakers particularly emphasize equality. The light of God, the unerring guide to Christian action, exists in every individual. In their “meeting,” Quakers wait in silence for guidance. While young boys, such as young Herbert, dare only to count their toes, their elders await the “Light” and speak God’s words when they come. The Bible, when read daily, will support and inspire the “Light.” God is immanent in all men. And to feel God and the inspiration of Christ, all attention must be directed to the voice of God and Christ. Thus there is no music, no stained glass, no pulpit, no leader—as there was not in the stark white meeting house that Hoover attended as a boy in West Branch. True, his mother, Huldah, sang, and some Quakers went the way of more evangelical Protestant form and service, but Herbert

Hoover always preferred the plain meeting house and its silent service. He, as president, and his wife, Lou, were to a large degree responsible for the building of the plain and dignified meeting house on Florida Avenue in Washington. It is important to be reminded that personal experience was the key to the “Inner Light,” an individualism that made men equal (without denying, of course, a corporate unity). Friends so believed in individualism that they vigorously pursued the liberty and equality that were attached to it. Such a quest was accomplished by adhering to the tenets of the religion, which took the form of “Queries,” read at the monthly meeting of Friends. The Queries—questions asked of Quakers over the centuries since George Fox had led his followers away from the formalities of Catholicism, Anglicanism, and Presbyterianism—were remarkably consistent, although changed to adjust to the times. By young Hoover’s day and into the twentieth century, Friends were asked not only if they opposed war but also capital punishment, legal oaths, intemperance, gambling, secret societies, extravagance, discrimination, paid ministry, the double standard; and if they favored rights for laborers, education, social relief, temperance, proper treatment of Indians and Negroes, prison reform, the loving care of the insane, foreign missions, equality of the sexes, simplicity, religious tolerance, free ministry, civil liberty, and ecumenical cooperation. The essence of the Queries, then as now, was peaceful cooperation always—ordered-freedom. The Queries, of course, were items of brotherly advice, repeated so often and so sternly that they implied a morality and will of God that demanded discipline and order among Quakers. Quakers, young Hoover apparently being no exception, practiced an “ordered liberty”—a seeming paradox. More than any other Christian denomination, Quakers stress the individual relationship of its members to God. Yet, Quakers are both consciously and unconsciously pressured to adhere to the tenets (Queries) that they believe Christ would have applied to their day, if not to His day—a “corporate individualism.”3 It seems safe to assume that such a fountainhead influenced Hoover to say, as he entered the presidency, “My concept of America is a land where men and women may walk in ordered-freedom.” The transition from Quaker youth to president, however, was no sudden leap. The reader must realize that it came by stages of reinforcement. First, Hoover, in his Quaker moorings, learned that freedom, though essential, could never be absolute. His Quaker individualism required the discipline of self and cooperation with others. Only so could there be assured among men and women the equality of freedom and individualism. Thus was launched young Herbert Hoover’s incremental march to high presidential belief and commitment.4 George Fox, the founder of Quakerism, did say that Friends would never “fight any war against any man with outward weapons, neither for the Kingdom of Christ, nor for the kingdoms of this world.”5 Such was a heavy charge laid on Quakers, including those in the milieu of Hoover’s “education.” Hoover’s valiant efforts for peace before and during his presidency were undoubtedly influenced by the Quaker tenet. (Stimson frequently thought they were.) But some Quakers have supported war, as did Hoover during World War I. Hoover was no pacifist. Perhaps his shift from sectarian to secular Quakerism worked to remove any strong pacifist inhibitions. Quaker influence on Hoover’s foreign policy does become important when one sees in his thought and life a combination of both the Friends’ penchant for peace and their consistent search for orderliness “everywhere.”6 Although the “ordered-freedom” of Quakers

impressed Hoover far more than did pacifism, for him the latter tenet seems to have affected the former. Hoover believed, for example, that the real force for peace and order was moral, not military. Indeed, he would lend his good offices during his presidency to effect more disarmament than had his predecessors. He expected to succeed. “It seems to me,” he wrote to his new secretary of state, “that there is the most profound outlook for peace today that we have had at any time in the last half century.”7 * * * Without question, the depression also affected Hoover’s foreign policy. It was, after all, one of the world’s most disturbing events since the industrial revolution of the late eighteenth century. Until the Great Depression the Western world assumed that its nations would move from strength to strength. But, as Robert H. Ferrell points out, during the twentieth century the West lost its “classical reckoning.” Adam Smith, the patron saint of the free and vigorous trade that so strengthened the Western nations during the Pax Britannica of the nineteenth century, would have been shocked by the nationalistic turn of economic and political events. Hoover, in late 1930, came to see the selfish interests of Western nations as the primary cause of the world-wide depression and, as we shall see, attempted to find international solutions, such as a moratorium on foreign debts and the planning of a great economic conference of Western nations to effect international economic stability. At times, even Hoover sought nationalistic solutions. More often than not, however, he hewed to an internationalism that was consistent with his Wilsonian experience. Nor did the depression so absorb him with domestic crises that he left the making of foreign policy to Secretary of State Stimson. Hoover was a strong president. Throughout his term he made foreign policy. Herbert Hoover was well equipped to direct American foreign policy. It has been said that probably no American president since John Quincy Adams had had as much experience on the foreign scene before becoming president. His mining experiences had made him knowledgeable about world affairs. He entered public life by providing food for war-ravaged people in much of Europe. It will be recalled that John Maynard Keynes commented that Hoover was the one statesman who came out of the Versailles proceedings with his reputation enhanced. As secretary of commerce during the 1920s he had become highly involved in international economic matters and other areas of foreign policy, including the Washington Arms Conference and the fight for United States participation in the World Court. After his election in 1928 he traveled extensively in South America, designing his administration’s foreign policy for that area of the world. Such experiences did not always make Herbert Hoover an internationalist. Indeed, his belief in protective tariffs, his distrust of Europe, and his support of immigration restriction showed a nationalist, even an isolationist, coloration.8 But, on balance, he practiced what Joan Hoff-Wilson has described as an “independent internationalism,”9 a position that he, not his secretary of state, imposed upon his administration. * * *

Still, Hoover’s secretary of state, Henry L. Stimson, was far more forceful than were most others who have held that high office. He did influence foreign policy strongly. What was fascinating was to see such strong men as Hoover and Stimson work in tandem. Their personalities were in such juxtaposition as to warrant a digression here in order to examine the relationship, not only because they often conferred and frequently vied in making foreign policy but also because the personality of the aristocrat Stimson is a foil for understanding the character of Hoover, the Quaker. Henry L. Stimson’s family lines ran back to the Massachusetts Bay Colony of the early seventeenth century and evolved to an aristocratic status two centuries later that afforded “Harry” all of its privileges and responsibilities. The former included education, travel, and associations that assured Stimson of having tremendous competence and self-confidence regarding what he thought and what he did. The responsibilities of class, a spirit of noblesse oblige, caused Stimson, as a brilliant young attorney in a prestigious law firm, to avoid “the green goods business” (i.e., big corporations and large fees) and instead to engage in public duties. In the performance of public duties he worked his way up to a seat on the powerful New York County Republican Committee and then, respectively, to the offices of United States attorney for the Southern District of New York, secretary of war, governor general of the Philippine Islands, and secretary of state. In periods between holding these various offices he returned to the private practice of law, always, however, with an eye to his next public service. Sometimes he failed, as when he lost the New York governorship race in 1910. Without exception, however, he seemed to learn. He came to the Hoover administration very wise politically and more self-assured than ever, two attributes that the president seemed to lack most. Vignettes extracted from Stimson’s lengthy diaries of the Hoover presidency years offer an insightful contrast of personalities between the secretary of state and the president. For example, the secretary very early in the administration enjoyed joshing with the “press boys,” and after heavy cross-examination, he usually brought them “in line again.” Later in the administration, when the “press boys” did not, for various reasons, get the story straight, the secretary frequently took the senior reporters aside and got them to understand the situation. Where Stimson got away with playing favorites, Hoover did not. The secretary continued to meet with all reporters down in the State Department, but the president met less and less often with the press. Stimson was spirited and enjoyed the ironies of life. He had a strong sense of humor. Hoover was frequently dispirited, usually oblivious to ironies, and seldom showed his humor. The president’s way, however, not the secretary’s, dominated the administration. In his diary the secretary constantly deplored the humorlessness in the administration. In October 1930, he wrote: “It has been dreadfully dull and stale, nothing but work, no play . . . and the ever present feeling of gloom. . . . I really never knew such un-enlivened occasions as our cabinet meetings. . . . I don’t remember that there has even been a joke cracked in a single meeting of the last year and a half.”10 Stimson often enjoyed sports. Very frequently, in mid-afternoon, he would return to his palatial home, Woodley, in northwest Washington, for a choice of sports: tennis, horseback riding, bowling, golf, deck tennis, “bowling on the green”, or if not a sport, an automobile ride

through the countryside. He often commented on his scores in his various athletic activities. Stimson seemed to be so often absent from the State Department that the president often thought that Stimson was ill. On the other hand, Stimson wished that the president would enjoy recreation as much as he did. The president threw a heavy leather medicine ball every morning, but for physical conditioning, not for pleasure. Hoover did enjoy fishing immensely. However, the sternness and insecurities of his childhood, quite in contrast to Stimson’s, appeared to affect his ability to relax, even when fishing. Frequently, when he was at Rapidan, rather than fish, he would slosh through mud and water carrying rocks to “build” a dam. Even when he played, which was seldom, he seemed to be compelled to work. The secretary of state accepted the challenge of his task day to day. World events, he felt, could not be planned and had to be met as they unfolded. He rather believed the same about domestic affairs. He thought that Hoover planned the impossible: for example, the president planned what Congress should do. However, the actions of such senators as William E. Borah were beyond planning. When Borah opposed the president on an issue, Hoover saw a conspiracy and thought that the Idaho senator was “bitter” toward him. Stimson, who was as different from the “wild jackass” Borah as he was from the Quaker president, cultivated the senator, who happened to be chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee. Borah and Stimson grew to like each other; Borah and Hoover grew to dislike each other. Yet in 1931, when Borah and other senators kept urging the president to call a special session of Congress, Stimson suggested that Hoover tell them to “go to hell.” The president was shocked.11 Unlike Hoover, Stimson was not inclined to harbor ill feelings. To the same person, Stimson could express wrath one day and sincere congeniality the next day. Stimson, from his class position, could be confidently patronizing. He would speak of Andrew Mellon as “childlike” and Hoover as the “poor old president.” Hoover, who had been born to poverty, lacked the class position and self-assurance to be condescending, despite his later wealth. The secretary of state knew when not to “strong arm” or “push” too hard, and he frequently advised the president not so to treat, for example, the French on the moratorium, the Japanese on Manchuria, and even Governor Franklin Roosevelt on the St. Lawrence Seaway. Stimson had a sense of constructive optimism; Hoover had a knack for destructive pessimism. Stimson often wished that the president would see the bright side—the potential for productive action. Yet the bright side that the secretary of state usually saw did not blind him to the reality of the moment. He thought that the president was too frequently unrealistic, as when Hoover laid out the ten American points to be established at the 1932 disarmament conference, which seemed to Stimson to be a Quakerly “Alice in Wonderland” position. Stimson was often charming, while Hoover was frequently the opposite—terse. Stimson could be short, but his short-temperedness seemed to be more acceptable than Hoover’s. The secretary recovered quickly, whereas the president brooded. What is revealing is that Stimson could be blunt with the president. When Hoover excitedly phoned the secretary to put out an anti-English and anti-French statement when they had procrastinated on the debts that they owed to the United States, Stimson said that he would talk to Secretary of the Treasury Ogden Mills about it, and then quickly hung up. When, on another occasion, Hoover expressed displeasure at a Stimson aide-memoire on a statement by Benito Mussolini that might have had an adverse effect on relations with Germany, the secretary noted in his diary that “I finally took

the paper away and told him that at this rate I would have to declare a moratorium on foreign affairs.”12 Actually, Hoover and Stimson complemented each other to the benefit of the nation’s foreign policy. The implicit tension in the relationship was usually salutary. One observer concluded: “It is doubtful whether any statesman could have built better with the materials which were available than did Secretary of State Henry L. Stimson.” And the author of that conclusion does not include Hoover among difficult “materials” with which Stimson worked. The president’s knowledge, experience, and commitment earned the secretary’s respect and affection—even though Stimson would one day serve Hoover’s Democratic successor. This leads to one final difference in personalities. Stimson was eclectic; Hoover was not. Stimson did serve well as Franklin Roosevelt’s secretary of war. Hoover seems later not to have forgiven his former secretary of state for joining the administration of his successor. In 1948, when Hoover read the account of Stimson from which the above conclusions are drawn, the former president described it as another “build-up for Stimson.” Hoover came to regret that he had not made Charles Francis Adams his secretary of state.13 * * * On October 5, 1929, Hoover and the British Prime Minister, Ramsay MacDonald, sat on a log in a secluded area down the hill from the president’s summer camp, Rapidan. They were messengers of peace. There they discussed what the New York Times on the previous day had predicted would be “a momentous undertaking,” to “clothe” the Kellogg-Briand (warrenouncing) Pact of 1928 in such a way as not just to outlaw war between great nations but actually to eliminate it.14 A decade later, World War II would erupt. The meeting of the two statesmen was not as naïve as it appears from the perspective of history. Stimson, who hovered over the discourse, agreed with the president that rationality and order should reign. Certainly if he, Stimson, could bring order to primitive areas of Nicaragua and the Philippine Islands, as he thought he had effectively done during the 1920s, he could do the same between great civilized nations. The secretary of state was confident that what Charles Evans Hughes had gained in the limitation of capital naval ships at the Washington Arms Conference in 1922, he (Stimson) could achieve for auxiliary ships in a forthcoming conference of the great sea powers. It mattered not that the Coolidge administration had failed to achieve such a limitation in 1927. The Quaker president, who had particularly enjoyed addressing foreign problems before being burdened by the depression, interested himself in disarmament causes: they are moral causes. The British, who are not prone to move with dispatch, especially in foreign affairs, became particularly serious about naval limitation when the United States Congress, in 1928, passed the Cruiser bill, which provided for the completion of fifteen heavily armed ships and an aircraft carrier. The British were hurting more financially than was the United States. Therefore, the new Labour prime minister had asked for an invitation to the White House and had come quickly to the United States to plan another attempt at naval disarmament. It was a brilliant autumn day—the view and the colors from the Blue Ridge Mountain top were kaleidoscopic. In the rough garb of the camp, the prime minister and the president walked

briskly to the clearing, with Hoover occasionally pointing to natural curiosities along the mountain stream path. The prime minister was amused by one unnatural phenomenon, a small Stimson “fish-sunning” dam, built by the hands of the secretary on a former recreational outing to the camp. In the clearing the leaders discussed the possibilities of placing a limitation on naval auxiliary ships, freedom of the seas in time of war, the presence of the British navy in the Western Hemisphere, and even the smuggling of liquor from the British possessions into the United States, which was a problem during prohibition. In reality, however, little of substance came from this highly publicized meeting. Few of the items on the agenda were consummated. More significant than that was the absence of any thorny items of importance, such as American’s nonparticipation in the World Court, the protective United States tariff, and the war debts owed to the United States. A surfacing nationalism, as much on the part of the United States as Great Britain, precluded discussion of these matters. In this instance, however, style might have been more important than substance. The British prime minister was warmly received everywhere—down Broadway in New York, in the halls of Congress, at the White House, and, of course, in the Virginia mountains. The good will between the two English-speaking nations, as manifested by Hoover and MacDonald, was a presage of alliance in the war that was to come in the late 1930s. Hoover and MacDonald, at the Rapidan meeting, did plan to do everything possible to bring together the “Big Five” naval nations—the United States, Great Britain, Japan, France, and Italy—and to show good faith by appointing as delegates the best of their public and diplomatic servants. The president was determined not to repeat the grievous error of 1927, when Coolidge had sent second-rate delegates to the Geneva Naval Limitations Conference. Stimson therefore headed the United States delegation to the subsequent London Naval Conference. He was accompanied by Senate Democratic leader Joseph T. Robinson; Pennsylvania Senator David Reed, an influential Republican; Dwight W. Morrow, a highly regarded Republican and lately successful ambassador to Mexico; Navy Secretary Charles F. Adams, a descendant of former presidents; the United States ambassador to Belgium, Hugh Gibson, a confidant of the president’s; and the inimitable Charles G. Dawes, ambassador to the Court of St. James’s. The presence of the United States delegation was matched by a combination of British political and royal elite. No less a personage than King George V himself opened the proceedings in the awesome historical setting of the House of Lords. After His Majesty’s greetings, which were heard by radio in faraway places, including the basement of the White House, where members of the medicine-ball cabinet listened in gym clothes, Secretary Stimson moved that MacDonald be elected as permanent chairman of the conference. It was, again, however, a matter of style over substance. As contrasted to the prime minister’s meeting with the president in the United States, where style had effect, both style and substance in London seemed to be lacking. As is probably true in all international conclaves where the actuality of danger, such as war, is not imminent, the London conference would have few meaningful results. Peace seemed so inevitable as to make disarmament unnecessary. The conference nearly collapsed at the start, surely an early indication to Stimson and Hoover that international relations during their administration might be very difficult. Ramsay MacDonald had predicted as much when he told Ambassador Dawes that experts and lawyers make the reefs on which states founder. But even MacDonald could

not have predicted the technical morass that engulfed the conference. It proved to be impossible to extend to all naval vessels the existing tonnage ratios, which had been established for capital ships at the Washington Arms Conference. Simple tonnage was not enough for the experts. What, they asked, of comparative age, speed, armor, and general fighting value of all shapes and sizes of ships? And who knows, without battle experience, what ships would be effective under varying conditions? To begin, the conferees asked themselves how many 9,850-ton British cruisers with 7.5-inch guns it would take to equal the United States’ larger 10,000-ton cruisers with 8-inch guns. And whether lighter 6-inch-gun cruisers might not outmaneuver the heavier cruisers! The fact of the matter was that “old sea dogs,” who were most influential in the conference, were not interested in naval parity. With their national and professional pride, they looked to future naval victory against all comers, unencumbered by naval limitations. Secretary Stimson was far too strong a personality to let the “old sea dogs” undo what he and Hoover had dreamed and planned. In typical fashion, he cut through the experts’ mystification by writing to France’s Premier Andre Tardieu: “The whole purpose of the appointment of committees is to gain time so that the real issues may be settled by informal discussion outside.”15 The dialogue among political leaders smacked of the experts’ confusion. France would not consider the limitation of armaments without having some assurance of security against its traditional enemy, Germany, and the threatening enemy, Mussolini’s Italy. The United States, Great Britain, and France engaged in long discussions over European security as assured by the League of Nations Covenant, the Four Power Treaty of the Washington Arms Conference, the Kellogg-Briand Pact, and the Five-Power Locarno Treaty, but never to the satisfaction of the French. All nations that were represented in London were, of course, constrained by political situations at home. Actually, Stimson favored a security arrangement with France but knew that the Senate would never agree to such a treaty arrangement. He then told France’s Foreign Minister Aristide Briand, who frequently walked out of meetings in a huff, that he would support a “consultative pact” if it were not tied to the Naval Limitations Treaty. But not unlike the hawkish-dovish differences between Stimson and Hoover on the upcoming Manchurian crises, Hoover vetoed the idea of a “consultative pact” that might morally commit the United States to defend France, if the latter were attacked. The British were about as cool toward any French special-security arrangements at the London Naval Conference as were the Americans. When that fact became readily apparent, the French left the conference, and Stimson reconciled himself to a three-power naval agreement among Great Britain, the United States, and Japan. At this point the secretary was tiring of the ordeal and wished he were back at Woodley, his Washington estate. Secretary Stimson’s next major problem at the London Naval Conference, which was only slightly better handled, was Japan’s insistence that the ratio for auxiliary ships give her a higher standing than that accorded to her in the Washington Arms Conference’s 5:5:3 ratio of capital ships. After considerable haggling, in which the American delegate, Senator David Reed, played an important part, England and the United States agreed to a cruiser ratio of 10:10:6 in principle, which was in fact closer to a 10:10:7 ratio. In addition, the United States agreed not to build up to the London-allotted strength until after 1936, at the same time permitting Japan to construct a total of twelve heavy cruisers (which would give Japan a 72

percent ratio in all small cruisers and destroyers) and parity with the United States and Great Britain in submarines. Unfortunately, the military atmosphere at home in Japan rendered its people sufficiently humiliated by the agreements that, in the long run, the conference might not have been worth the British and American efforts. Italy’s role in the London Naval Conference was a less significant problem to Stimson and Hoover. Italy’s enmity toward France had been such that Italy had left the conference. Hoover now tired of haggling and was eager to get provisions that would be confirmed by the United States Senate. These were: extension of the capital-ship holiday to 1936; an “escalator clause,” which would permit the United States to exceed the ratio if other powers did so; limitation of the 10:10:7 tonnage levels until 1936; a series of agreements on various ship replacements and conversions. Not surprisingly, the Senate procrastinated on its agreement but finally yielded on July 21, 1930, 58 to 9. The conference seemed in many respects to have been a failure. Still, for the first time, modern naval forces had consented to restrictions in all classifications of ships. * * * The centerpiece of any chapter on Hoover’s foreign policy, for several reasons, is the Stimson Doctrine. For one, New Left revisionists, decades later, would applaud Hoover for restraining his secretary of state and for staying out of a Far Eastern war. Second, the event characterized distinctly the streams of noninterventionist and interventionist foreign policy, the former being reflected by the strong-minded president, the latter by an equally strong-minded, though deferential, secretary of state. Third, the story of the doctrine provides another account of the personality differences between Hoover and Stimson. Last, it reveals the important relationship of Hoover foreign policy to the immediate past and future—the past of the Washington and other treaties and the future of Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor. The setting for the Stimson doctrine of nonrecognition (of the Japanese puppet Manchukuo government) was Manchuria, an agriculturally and resource-rich part of northern China, where both Russia and Japan had treaty rights and considerable economic interests. The beginning of the crisis came early in the Hoover presidency, when in July 1929 China proceeded to dislodge the Russians by taking over the Soviet-dominated Central Eastern Railway, which traversed Manchuria from the USSR on the west to the Russian port city of Vladivostok on the Sea of Japan. It was an adventure of the Chinese leader Chiang Kaishek, who sought a show of power that, even if unsuccessful, might well eliminate a political adversary, the “Young Marshall” Chang Hsueh-liang, the Chinese warlord of Manchuria. While this distant activity was not bothersome to much of the rest of the world, it was to the new American secretary of state, fresh from his Far Eastern tour as governor general of the Philippines. He felt that something should be done to prevent a possible war between two adherents to the KelloggBriand Peace Pact, which was to be formally proclaimed in the East Room of the White House on July 24, 1929. Of the three treaties that Stimson considered using in the Far Eastern crisis—the Nine Power (Washington) Pact of 1922, the Kellogg-Briand Pact of 1928, and the League of Nations Covenant—Russia was not a signatory to the first, and the United States was not to the last. So

if Stimson were to act, he would have to use the new Kellogg nonaggression pact. In fact, it was the best choice, being the most thoroughgoing commitment to peace that had ever been made by great powers. The secretary moved with dispatch in mid July by getting important signatory nations to call for a peace in Manchuria that would be consonant with the pact. On the day after the United States formally proclaimed the pact, the eager secretary proposed that an international commission of conciliation be appointed to arbitrate the matter. Stimson soon learned that his diplomacy was somewhat simplistic (“shirt-sleeved”), when the Japanese ambassador in Washington, Katsuzi Debuchi, wondered what the United States would do if conciliation were rejected. Would it use pressure to enforce the commission’s findings? Secretary Stimson dropped the commission idea, but he did so without really having heard the Japanese ambassador’s implied advice against Western meddling in the Far East. When, in the fall of 1929, Russia made border raids on Manchuria, Stimson took a page from one of his eminent predecessors, John M. Hay, and sent messages to the Kellogg-Briand Pact signatories, admonishing China and Russia to adhere to “the most sacred processes” of the Kellogg nonaggression pact. Stimson announced that “the replies were favorable in principle to my proposal.” The fact of the matter was that war in Manchuria was not imminent. China and Russia had agreed to a settlement. Stimson, particularly, should have been more responsive to Japan’s extreme sensitivity to American “meddling.” But the secretary of state and his president, who concurred in the American action, were learning quickly that diplomacy requires caution. It is possible, also, that the matter taught the president something about his secretary of state. Hoover should have learned that his secretary of state shunned the slowness and subtleties of diplomacy, although Stimson quickly adjusted to the latter, if not the former. And Stimson might have learned from the Sino-Russian conflict that moral suasion in diplomacy has its limitations in implementation and effectiveness. When the second Manchurian crisis between Japan and China developed in 1931, the president, though he was much burdened by the depression, watched over the affair much more closely, for reasons stemming from his experience in the first crisis. That Hoover directed foreign affairs is seen by the nation’s policy toward Japan’s takeover of all of Manchuria and by the Stimson Doctrine of Nonrecognition, a policy that clearly should be labeled the Hoover-Stimson Doctrine, principally because of Hoover’s restraint on Stimson and also because Hoover had conceived the idea in the first place. It was a complicated and important policy-making affair. To begin with, Japan’s interests and treaty rights in Manchuria were every bit as important to that island nation as Russia’s interests were; in fact, Japan’s concerns were the more serious because she viewed Manchuria as a buffer against the Russians. When on the night of September 18, 1931 a small section of Japan’s South Manchuria Railway line, north of Mukden, was destroyed, a Japanese patrol shot and killed several Chinese soldiers who were fleeing from the scene. No investigation, then or since, has been able to assign blame for the “missing track.” The story of the incident became so confused that some years later, Stimson believed that it had never really happened. At first, both Hoover and Stimson had little interest in the Mukden incident. In fact, Stimson was disposed to think the best of Japan, for our security in the area seemed to be tied to Japan’s stabilizing influence there. When, however, Japanese troops fanned out beyond the

railroad area into the Chinese countryside and did not return to the railroad zone, Stimson became anxious, as did the League of Nations, which differently from what it had done in the first Manchurian affair, now looked to Washington for leadership. China also appealed to the United States, as a cosponsor of the Kellogg Pact, for some sign of support. Stimson, having once been burned by “shirtsleeve” diplomacy, did not act. The president was in agreement. The League of Nations passed a resolution unanimously calling on the contending parties in Manchuria to restore normal relations, but to no avail. Japanese planes were soon bombing the city of Chinchou in southern Manchuria. Now the secretary became agitated at the news and, in Hoover’s presence, strongly urged some United States action, which provoked the president to demand caution in the matter. The two agreed on a policy to await the League of Nations action, and they did support the League when, in November 1931, it passed a second resolution calling upon Japan to leave the Chinese territory. Although dangerously simplistic, it is interesting to note somewhat parallel dialogues that took place within the Japanese and United States foreign offices. A long-term dialogue between peace and war factions in Japan resulted in the military’s assuming control in 1931, in support of the military control of Manchuria. The dialogue between Hoover and Stimson on Manchuria also marks a difference regarding American reaction to the Manchurian affair. It did so along noninterventionist and activist lines, although the Hoover-Stimson split was mild as compared to the peace-war differences within the Japanese government and, of course, was carried out here in a democratic tradition. The differences between Hoover and Stimson particularly caught the attention of historians during the 1960s as they watched war elements in Washington win out and entrap the nation in another war in the Far East.16 Hoover, who was fearful that the nation might become involved in an Asian conflict by taking an untoward action, expressed the view in a cabinet meeting that the League of Nations must not deposit “the baby” (bombing of Chinchou) on “the Americans.”17 Stimson agreed, but mused in his diary about the importance of our own treaty commitments. In early November the League of Nations in Geneva, and Stimson in Washington, discussed various options to be taken in the Manchurian affair. Stimson wrote in his diary: “An embargo [is] an attempt to put on economic pressure [and the president] ruled it out on the ground that it . . . would be provocative and lead to war. His idea was that we might withdraw an ambassador [from Japan], and, if we did so, he would give out a statement at the same time putting war out of the question, an announcement that we would not under any event go to war and that that was contrary to our present policy and to all treaties and contrary to the view of the world. I concur with him as to the danger of a blockade leading to war. It’s almost [as] . . . belligerent [a] step [as] in the case of Jefferson, although the situation there was entirely different in 1807, it did eventually take this country to war.”18 Two days later, the secretary further reported to his diary: “He [the president] is beginning to swing against the idea of withdrawing the ambassador and thinks his main weapon is to give an announcement that if the treaty is made under military pressure we will not recognize it. . . . This matter I also discussed afterwards with [the staff]. [Far Eastern Affairs chief, Stanley] Hornbeck [said] the remedy didn’t amount to anything because we had tried it in 1915. But there the situation was wholly different. . . . Under present situations, particularly if the disavowal is made by all the countries, it ought to have a very potent effect.”19

The above selections from Stimson’s diary for November 7 and 9 are important to understanding two key elements in the relationship between the president and the secretary of state during the course of the Sino-Japanese crisis—namely, that Hoover would not support economic sanctions and that he originally conceived the doctrine of nonrecognition. Stimson thought over the nonrecognition approach—some experts in the State Department thought it too drastic—but he delayed taking further action, thinking the Japanese might halt their aggressions or that the League of Nations might take a stronger position. On January 2, 1932 the Japanese occupied the city of Chinchou. Then Stimson acted. After a sleepless night, at 6:00 a.m. on January 3 he went to his library “and wrote out in long hand a short note to the Chinese Government and to the Japanese Government.”20 It was the Stimson Doctrine, which, following discussion of it with his aides and the president, was sent on January 7, 1932. In effect, it said that the United States would not recognize any treaty of agreement that was not in accord with any existing treaties, such as the Kellogg and Nine Power pacts. Short and profound, its origins were in a 1915 State Department action to restrain Japan’s demands on China. Actually, it was suggested by Hoover and by Walter Lippmann, in a letter proposing that since “all resort to force is barred to us why not persuade the signatories of the Nine-Power Pact to declare that they should not recognize as legal any agreements which may result from Japanese action since September 18th.” Lippmann hoped that nonrecognition would work to Japan’s economic disadvantage and that “it would be fair to hope the military party would eventually be overthrown.”21 It is difficult to determine just when the doctrine came to be called the Stimson Doctrine. Probably it was so named as events moved through January 1932, especially late in the month, when Japan attacked the “old city” of Shanghai, an event that was really not planned by the military in Tokyo. The military action resulted in the death of hundreds of Chinese and angered foreigners in Shanghai, as well as their home governments, including the United States and, especially, Stimson, who became increasingly disenchanted with the Japanese. By late December 1932 the secretary of state was ready to send naval forces to protect Americans in Shanghai, and at first, the president actually seemed to concur. Secretary of Navy Adams had reservations about such an overt act, and Secretary of War Patrick Jay Hurley, who was usually not reluctant to use military force, sharply questioned Stimson when the secretary of state mentioned to the cabinet “the importance of having Japan fear this country.” Hoover, in the cabinet, took a middle position, praising Stimson for the nonrecognition notes but warning of the “folly of getting into a war with Japan on this subject.” He wanted no policy of threat. Stimson’s diary account that night reflected “the great difference and difficulty” he was having with the president: “He has not got the slightest element of even the fairest kind of bluff.”22 When the Japanese bombed the civilian quarter of Shanghai and the secretary then talked to the president about the need for “leadership” to avoid Wilson’s timid example in 1915, Hoover recoiled and the two clashed. Throughout February, Stimson talked, but mostly mused, about the “Open Door,” the Nine-Power Pact, the Kellogg Pact, and other responsibilities that the nation had in the affair. While the divergence between Hoover and Stimson as to what role the United States should play in the matter widened, it must be remembered that Stimson’s musings in his diary were quite different from what he in fact did. He loyally carried out the president’s more cautious policy of noninterference. Still, Stimson was frustrated, not only with the

president and the cabinet, which more accurately reflected American opinion, but also with the League of Nations and the British foreign minister, Sir John Simon, who would not publicly support the nonrecognition doctrine. Assistant Secretary of State James G. Rogers suggested that Stimson write “a letter to somebody,” reiterating his strong feelings on the subject. Stimson did so, to the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, William E. Borah, in which he emphasized that Japanese aggression was contrary to all the Washington treaties of 1922—the 9-Power, 5-Power, and 4Power pacts—and that if Japan persisted in its aggression, the United States would view itself as being released from any treaty limitation on its navy and Pacific bases. Hoover supported the missive, although he wanted to assure the world that the United States would not support any sanctions against Japan. Stimson talked the president out of a “no-sanctions” statement. After the Borah letter of February 14, 1932, the League of Nations, at the urging of Sir John A. Simon, adopted a resolution of nonrecognition. Stimson was emboldened again and talked (and mused) again about economic sanctions and a naval presence in Shanghai. However, only the threat of nonrecognition remained as United States anti-Japanese policy in Manchuria. It seems, however, that the doctrine meant different things to the president and to the secretary of state—the maximum action to the former, possibly the beginning of action to the latter, including economic and military sanctions. In late spring of 1932 Stimson attended the disarmament conference in Europe, and while Stimson was out of the country, Undersecretary of State William R. Castle made two speeches in which he assured the American people that the government did not expect to use any economic or military pressure in carrying out its Manchurian policy. Reporters sensed a difference between Hoover and Stimson on Far Eastern policy—the former seemed to be pacifistic; the latter, military-minded. Stimson reported in his diary that Hoover took responsibility for the statements given out during Stimson’s absence, telling the secretary of state that he permitted their release because he feared that the Japanese might take military action against the United States. While Hoover’s explanation lacked candor, Stimson seemed to be genuinely relieved that the president “apparently had no thought of differing with me seriously.”23 However, Hoover differed from Stimson far more than Stimson thought at the time and perhaps less than historians later thought. At the time, Hoover, who was in the midst of the 1932 presidential campaign, wanted Stimson to make a speech proclaiming nonrecognition as the Hoover Doctrine. The president felt that as it stood, it was his, for the “secretary wanted always to go in for withdrawal of diplomats or an economic embargo, either or both of which would almost inevitably lead to war.” Stimson refused Hoover’s suggestion, saying to him that in his (Stimson’s) letter to Senator Borah he had already credited the president with the instigation of the doctrine.24 In due course, the Japanese left Shanghai but consolidated their position in Manchuria. In February 1933 the League of Nations issued the Lytton Report, which thoroughly and accurately documented the Japanese aggression. The report preceded the nearly unanimous vote of the League Assembly “against Japan for virtually every action taken by her in Manchuria.” In February the Japanese representative to the League of Nations pleaded the rightness of his nation’s position in Manchuria and led his delegation out of the League.

In his memoirs, which were published in 1948, Stimson called the nonrecognition doctrine “the greatest constructive achievement” of his public life. Although inadequate as only a moral condemnation, it had “secured a united front against approval of conquest by military power.”25 The president, in his Memoirs, published five years after Stimson’s, noted that “besides effective defense of the Western Hemisphere, America can take either of two roads in international relations: The one is to develop moral standards. . . . The other is to use economic and inevitably military force against aggressors.” Hoover still stood on the former; Stimson seemed to stand on both. The distinction between the two seemed to build up with the passage of time.26 As the centerpiece of foreign policy, one can argue that the Stimson Doctrine represented the Hoover presidency at its best. The dialogue between a president—who leaned toward peace and reflected public opinion—and a secretary of state—who leaned toward force and possibly war—reflected the reality of future events. Nevertheless, the dialogue had no stabilizing effect on the Manchurian crisis, which George F. Kennan has described as “a vast and turgid process, involving immensely powerful currents of human affairs over which we Americans had little control or influence.”27 * * * Hoover’s foreign policy elsewhere, in Latin America and in Europe, had a “hands-on” quality which distinguished it from his Far Eastern policy. The president had spent ten weeks touring Latin America in the interregnum before his inauguration, and the secretary of state had made two lengthy missions to Europe during the presidency. Both Hoover and Stimson had close contact with the leaders and representatives in Latin America and Europe, but with varying results. United States foreign policy in the Western Hemisphere was highly successful; the policy in Europe was about as unsuccessful as was that in the Far East. Still, White House and State Department foreign policy efforts in all places were of a high order during the Hoover years. A brief examination of Latin American diplomacy reminds historians that it was a “good neighbor” policy. In the public perception, that policy is attributed to Franklin Roosevelt. In fact, Roosevelt, in his Inaugural Address in 1933, enunciated a “good neighbor” policy toward all the nations of the world. He obviously drew from what Hoover had called the established policy toward Latin America. Hoover’s ulterior motive for going to Central and South America—to stay out of Coolidge’s way—had faded as he planned the most extended foreign tour by any president or president-elect up to that time. The grand affair—passage by battleship, naval escorts, large entourages, palace receptions—had become a learning experience for the president as he studied and as he wrote some twenty-five speeches to be delivered in ten nations. He adopted a “good neighbor” course. In his very first address, delivered in Amapala, Honduras, on November 26, 1928, he said: I come to pay a call of friendship. In a sense I represent on this occasion the people of the United States extending friendly greeting to our fellow democracies on the American continent. I would wish to symbolize the friendly visit of one good neighbor

to another. In our daily life, good neighbors call upon each other as the evidence of solicitude for the common welfare and to learn of the circumstances and point of view of each, so that there may come both understanding and respect which are cementing forces of all enduring society. This should be equally true amongst nations. We have a desire to maintain not only cordial relations of government with each other but the relations of good neighbors.28

Latin American audiences had reason to be pleased, although they also had reason to be suspicious. For more than two decades the Theodore Roosevelt corollary to the Monroe Doctrine had justified United States intervention in the internal affairs of many, if not most, of the nations south of the United States border. Frequently invited, and frequently uninvited, the United States too often had manifested an imperial presence in Latin America. Of course, the nation felt that its interest required stability in the Western Hemisphere, to be assured by United States military and economic presence. However, with the passage of time from its proclamation by Theodore Roosevelt in 1904—“brutal wrongdoing, or an impotence . . . may finally require intervention . . . [and] the United States cannot ignore this duty”—the Roosevelt Corollary had become onerous. Because Senate debate over the Kellogg-Briand Pact of 1928 might include discussion of the corollary, Undersecretary of State J. Reuben Clark, Jr., made a lengthy study of the Monroe Doctrine and the Roosevelt Corollary and concluded that the latter really was not consonant with the former, that the doctrine was originally intended as a shield from Europe, not as a lance held by the United States. Hoover pondered Clark’s study, which was called the Clark Memorandum, and other recent efforts to assuage Latin America—such as the appointment of Dwight W. Morrow as ambassador to Mexico (with which Morrow came to have a “love affair”) and the presence of both Charles Evan Hughes and President Coolidge at the Sixth Latin American Conference in Havana in 1928. Latin nations might have thought Hoover’s “good neighbor” pronouncements only rhetorical when no signs of such a policy were evinced during the first year of his presidency. But evidence was forthcoming in September 1930, when the State Department replaced Woodrow Wilson’s moralistic policy of recognition with a threefold basis for recognition of Latin American governments: de facto control, an intent to fulfill international obligations, and plans to hold elections “in due course.” Shortly thereafter, the Hoover administration’s new policy was tested in connection with removing United States military forces from Nicaragua and Haiti. Most accounts emphasize the withdrawal of the United States marines from the former and a planned withdrawal from the latter. While this is essentially true, Stimson’s diary in October 1930 interestingly records that the president had wanted to withdraw very early in his administration. An old hand in the State Department, Dana C. Munro, warned Stimson that if we got out of Haiti, we would not get back in. The president apparently was taking seriously the advice of the president of Tuskegee Institute, Robert R. Moton, who said that Haiti’s President Eugene Roy would not be a mere puppet “in the hands . . . of Americans.” Hoover told Stimson that, regardless of the consequences of our leaving Haiti, “we should get out anyway.”29 The secretary dictated to his diary: “I am rather afraid he [the president] is on the wrong track.” Stimson prevailed, perhaps wisely. The withdrawal was “planned” but was not effected until 1934. Hoover had wanted out in 1930.30 Basically, Hoover and Stimson thought alike on the withdrawal of the United States military forces from Latin America. The president at times seemed the more eager to expedite the policy. Stimson, if just as firm, was more cautious. Fundamentally, they worked in concert.

When in the spring of 1931, the New Orleans Banana Company and other interests wanted military protection of American citizens who were conducting business in the unstable interior of Nicaragua, Hoover emphatically supported the secretary in not providing such. At that, it took another year and a half to get all of the marines out. Hoover and Stimson seemed to rely on each other in developing the new policy of nonintervention. When, in the spring of 1932, a visitor asked Stimson if he would protect American interests in Chile and Columbia, Stimson replied: “Not on your life.”31 Both Hoover and Stimson naturally were influenced by the Manchurian affair, which was raging at the time. While the withdrawal policy in Latin America would have come in spite of the Far Eastern problem, the United States was very anxious not to be seen using her military forces in foreign lands, as Japan was doing in Manchuria. The Clark Memorandum in June of 1930 had stated the administration’s abrogation of the Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine. Unfortunately, as is often the case with his initiatives, Hoover has not been credited with the promulgation because it was not delivered to Latin American governments. Former Secretary of State Frank B. Kellogg and Stimson urged that the memorandum be officially dispatched, but the president had questions about some of its details. He thought a celebration of delivery might “provoke a great deal of debate.”32 Also, domestic matters were occupying his time. Hoover’s policy of recognition and both his withdrawal and his planned withdrawal of military forces gave Latin American governments proof of his “good neighbor” policy. But it was the succeeding president, Franklin D. Roosevelt, with his flamboyance, who captured imaginations by telling the world what he was doing by way of freeing Latin America from the “Colossus of the North.” Illustrative of effective foreign policy during the Hoover presidency was Stimson’s quiet attempt at resolving Latin American disputes between Paraguay and Bolivia over the Chaco, and between Peru and Columbia over Leticia. In a sense these represented the best in United States diplomatic intervention. In the first case, Stimson and his competent assistant secretary for Latin American Affairs, Francis White, worked through the Pan American Union to declare a Stimson Doctrine of nonrecognition of Bolivia’s seizure of the Paraguayan outpost Fort Carlos Antonio Lopez. It was ironic that while the United States was giving up its nonrecognition policy in Latin America, it supported nonrecognition in this case. Mexico’s suggestion that the nineteen members of the Pan American Union send a joint telegram to Paraguay and Bolivia, as a warning on nonrecognition, pleased the secretary of state. The joint telegram was sent on August 3, 1933, but the war between the two nations continued until 1935. Stimson worked even harder to resolve the Columbia-Peru borderland dispute. In this case he even brought representatives of European powers and Japan to Woodley to consider sending a joint admonitory note to the two nations, which included the Kellogg-Briand prohibition against aggression. All agreed to do so except Japan, which was then engaged in its own aggression. The Leticia affair between the two nations was finally settled by the League of Nations in 1934. Henry L. Stimson, however, had taken the first important moves to resolve the crisis. When all had been said and done about Hoover’s Latin American policy, Franklin Roosevelt picked it up, barely dropping a stitch. The New Deal did introduce one major reform, a reciprocal-trade program, which lowered the high Smoot-Hawley tariff schedules. In so doing, it further enhanced Latin-American good will, which had begun with Hoover’s “good

neighbor” policy. * * * While the “good neighbor” policy was the most successful part of the foreign policy of the Hoover presidency, the high point was the one-year “moratorium” on German reparations and on foreign debts that were owed to the United States. It yielded up a national sigh of relief and was almost everywhere viewed as being imaginative. Whereas it seemed to bode well as an American action in Europe, the World Disarmament Conference, which was conducted simultaneously with the moratorium, manifested failure from the start. The massive war debts that Western nations owed the United States were not a particular problem or an issue until the depression set in, thus interrupting the international exchange of money. Prior to the depression, American banks had loaned Germany vast sums of money at high interest rates; Germany used the loans largely to meet Versailles reparation payments to Allied nations, especially to England and France, which in turn used the reparations to pay off much of their indebtedness to the United States. It all worked for awhile, especially because the Dawes and Young plans successfully reduced the reparations. In fact, by the end of the decade, just prior to the depression, Germany was recovering remarkably from its highly inflationary post-war economic slump. However, Germany had borrowed to the hilt, many times more than it needed for its reparation payments. In view of the depression squeeze, Germany complained about the cost of her reparations. France and England, however, did not listen, because they needed the money to pay their own war debts to the United States. Washington consistently refused to see the connection between the reparations and debts. Secretary Stimson saw it, but he was not elected to office. It was well and good for him to talk of “these damn debts,” but he was not as accountable as Hoover was to the public who remembered Coolidge’s aphorism: “They hired the money, didn’t they?”33 Nevertheless, by early 1931 Germany was not able to pay both its debts to the United States and its reparations to England and France. Its threat of default on reparations caused bank runs in America. Loans to Germany dried up at the American source. By the spring of 1931 Germany and Austria allied in a customs union to save themselves cutting foreign imports; France retaliated by withholding funds for German and Austrian banks. The central bank of Austria, Creditanstaldt, failed. The United States ambassador to Germany, Frederic M. Sackett, who was home on leave, explained to the president how serious Germany’s economic plight had become. It now was experiencing a massive flight of gold. The idea of a one-year moratorium on intergovernmental debts was Hoover’s, but in retrospect, we see that he had no choice. Still, Stimson and, later, French Ambassador Paul Claudel were surprised by the boldness of the move. Stimson naturally supported it. Aside from the grave economic conditions, Europeans were bitter about the idea of the debt. Not long before, Stimson and Elihu Root had agreed on the scenario that Europeans saw—that the United States had made money on the last war. By refusing to join the League of Nations or the World Court, the United States, they calculated, would abet the next war in which it would make still more money. Secretary of the Treasury Ogden Mills was ready to extend the moratorium to two years. But what might have seemed like no choice to those close to the

White House was viewed as a bad choice to some unhappy congressmen and some French leaders. Hoover worked to convince congressional leaders of the need for their support; the State Department tried to persuade France to adopt the moratorium. Stimson described the efforts to secure support for the moratorium on many fronts as “quite like a war.” At times he worried about the president’s dark side. “The president was tired,” wrote Stimson, and “he went through all the blackest surmises. . . . But I think he is moving at last.”34 But to Stimson’s delight, Hoover got in touch with thirty members of Congress and won them over to support the moratorium when they convened the next December. Congressional leaders reflected the supportive mood of the nation on the issue. Of course, not all of them did. Senator George Norris, long one of Hoover’s opponents, strung out his pejorative comments to the president of the Farmers’ Union, John A. Simpson: “the so-called Hoover moratorium proposition!”; “first time he has communicated with me”; “members of congress . . . with unprejudiced minds and unpledged action [should] debate questions of this kind”; “I am suspicious that . . . Great Britain . . . has communicated this idea and had Hoover father it”; “the first step toward an attempt to cancel all [debts]”; “England and France would make no sacrifice whatsoever.”35 The French leaders appeared to be as adamantly opposed as was Norris. As the Nebraska senator seemed to condone English and French suffering, so France seemed to feel the same way about Germany. But the French bowed to pressure from Washington and concurred on July 6; they even agreed to a one-year “stand-still” agreement on private short-term credits. The moratorium was credited with having warded off an economic and political crises in Germany. In the end, it only prolonged the worsening of the crisis. In January 1932, at Lausanne, Switzerland, the Western nations agreed to forgive the German reparations, assuming that the United States would forgive the war debts, something that no American president in an election year could agree to do. Economic and political confusion continued to reign over Europe. In September 1932 England went off the gold standard. Some observers thought that this was the end of Western civilization. The American president plodded on through a presidential campaign and more planning, this time for the great London Economic Conference to be convened in 1933; again he proposed to bring order and stability to the Western world and, of course, to the United States. Hoover had principally in mind the restoration of the gold standard and, perhaps, a quid pro quo: United States consultation on war debts in exchange for British tariff concessions. * * * The World Disarmament Conference, which convened in Geneva in early 1932, is accurately described by Robert H. Ferrell as having been “an unmitigated nuisance.” Leaders of the Great Powers went through the motions. It had been anticipated very long; the people wanted it and thought that the mass of delegates could make it work. The depression, however, was closing in on the president, who believed that he had little time to waste. He was downright annoyed that the French Premier Pierre Laval paid a state visit to the United States prior to the conference. “What has he come for, anyway?” Hoover asked in his blunt way. Stimson noted that the president acted as if Laval had come “to pick his pocket.”

Laval had probably come for what he considered to be two good reasons: one, to get political mileage back home by looking like a hard worker in Washington; two, to lay the groundwork for the one thing that the French wanted at the disarmament conference—security against the historical German threat. Laval got no satisfaction. In fact, Hoover said that the conference would deal with land armies—a European, not an American, problem. Some excitement ensued during the visit, when Senator Borah told the press that the Versailles Treaty should be revised to return the Polish Corridor to Germany and to redraw the Hungarian frontiers. Laval exclaimed: “Why, the man lives on Mars!” Actually, when Stimson got Borah and Laval together at Woodley, they charmed one another; but as little substance came from their meeting as from any other conference that Laval experienced in Washington. The communiqué issued upon his departure was innocuous: “We find that we view the nature of these financial and economic problems in the same light and this understanding on our part should serve to pave the way for helpful action by our respective governments.”36 The United States delegation to the Disarmament Conference, which met in Geneva in February 1932, was ordinary compared with the one that had represented the nation at the London Naval Conference in 1930. Stimson was the head, but it was well understood that the ambassador to Belgium, Hugh Gibson, would do the work. Actually, the secretary of state spent much time securing support for his nonrecognition doctrine in the Far East. His memoirs, however, do reveal interesting discussions with the leaders of Europe on a range of subjects. At the conference itself, the French talked about an international police force, and Ambassador Gibson offered many suggestions, ranging from reducing many classifications of capital and auxiliary ships by one-third to abolishing submarines, airplanes, and tanks. These suggestions were actually the president’s. Stimson thought that they reflected the president’s “Quaker nature” and had a dreamlike quality about them.37 Although sincere, the president seemed to be playing on rhetoric rather than exercising a leadership role. Stimson put it plainly when he told the French that the United States should not lead the conference because we already had restricted or reduced our armaments and, besides, were out of air range of Europe. The conference got nowhere for many reasons, but foremost, especially for the French, was the problem of Continental security. France wanted a “consultative” pact with the United States and England as the price for reducing armaments. Both nations feared that a commitment to consultation with France would imply support if France were to be attacked, which would mean war. By June, Hoover, who was tired of watching the “dawdling,” proposed an all-around 30 percent reduction in armaments, which seemed reasonable to Germany, Italy, and Russia but not to France, which still feared another German invasion. The conference continued to “lag” and “slipped into limbo.” In the ensuing year, Great Britain suggested a draft convention which would result in an international conference if any nation broke the Pact of Paris. The United States offered consultation if nations would first reduce armaments. Nothing happened, except that in October 1933 Chancellor Hitler withdrew Germany both from the disarmament conference and from the League of Nations. Secretary Stimson still thought that he had served an important purpose with the conference by bringing the leaders of the powerful nations together. Furthermore, the conference had given the United States an opportunity to proselytize

for the Far Eastern policy of nonrecognition. * * * Though the Disarmament Conference of 1932 was “an unmitigated nuisance,” Hoover expected that the forthcoming London Economic Conference of 1933 would more than compensate for the very limited success of the Geneva meeting. The president’s enthusiasm for the possibilities of success for the Economic Conference seemed to be in inverse proportion to his feeling about the disarmament conclave. Particularly would he feel so as his term came to an end early in 1933. It is clear that Quaker pacifism, the Great Depression, and the forcefulness of Henry L. Stimson affected Hoover’s foreign policy far less than has been presumed heretofore. “Ordered-freedom”—Quakerly noncoercion—did become the hallmark of much of the Hoover administration’s actions overseas, as is demonstrated by the avoidance of economic and military sanctions against Japan in Manchuria, the withdrawal of United States marines from Nicaragua, and armament reduction at the London Naval Conference. But such was not pacifism. Noncoercion was vigorously pursued without abandoning the nation’s military capability. United States forces were stationed where they were needed, as in Shanghai, The Philippine Islands, and certain parts of Latin America and Europe. The president believed firmly, however, that the nation’s military capability abroad should not entail intervention. Nor should it portend intervention. Its only function was to maintain order and freedom, profound Quaker characteristics. To say that the depression was the determining force in Hoover’s foreign policy is to misunderstand the consistency of that policy almost everywhere, both before and after the depression. Foreign policy was usually unrelated to economic conditions at home and abroad. It is true, as the Stimson diaries demonstrate, that the president’s time came more and more to be taken up by a continually failing economy. In the process he undoubtedly did defer more frequently to Stimson; and at times the president manifested a testy economic nationalism. Almost always, however, he strove for a policy of Quakerly noncoercion and seemed always to adhere to the goal on American terms that were consonant with his independent internationalism. Franklin Roosevelt spoke advisedly when he said at the time that “old Hoover’s foreign policy has been pretty good” on two scores: first, it really was Hoover’s policy and not Stimson’s and, second, it was about as successful as it could be.38 Although the nonrecognition policy in Manchuria did not free China from Japanese occupation, there is little evidence to say that Stimson’s more aggressive stance would have done more good than harm. The Good Neighbor Policy was devised by Hoover before Stimson appeared on the scene early in the term. Stimson credited Hoover with the moratorium and thought it was one of Hoover’s finest hours, as it was one of the most exciting times of the secretary’s long career. Such foreign policy endeavors overshadowed the weaknesses of the administration: those nationalistic and ethnocentric efforts such as the high tariff, nonforgiveness of debts, and at the end of his term, his seeming use of the forthcoming economic conference to commit his successor to his domestic policy.

Alexander De Conde has recently made what might be the two most telling points about Hoover’s conduct of United States foreign policy. They are that Hoover’s spirit of noncoercion was so pervasive that it made void any trappings of “the imperial executive” and that the president was absolutely accountable to the people and to the Congress.39 Also, surely of service to the nation was the demonstration that a president can have at his side a forceful secretary of state who actually vies for policies. Stimson obviously had many strengths, not the least of which was knowing his constitutional place in the making and directing of foreign policy. NOTES Martin L. Fausold’s paper is a revised version of chapter nine, “Foreign Policy,” in his book, The Presidency of Herbert C. Hoover (Lawrence, Kansas: University Press of Kansas, 1985), reprinted by permission. This book was published in the American Presidency Series, edited by Donald R. McCoy, Clifford S. Griffin, and Homer E. Socolofsky. 1. Herbert Hoover, Addresses Upon the American Road, Aug. 11, 1928, p. 36; “Religious Tolerance,” Hoover Papers (hereafter cited as HP), Herbert Hoover Presidential Library, West Branch, Iowa (hereafter cited as HHPL). 2. William Hard, “Friend Hoover,” Christian Herald, (Sept. 15, 1928). 3. Preston Wolfe, oral history, HP, HHPL. 4. For the Quaker life style see William Wistar Comfort, Just among Friends: The Quaker Way of Life (New York, 1941) and Quakers in the Modern World (New York, 1949), chapter 7; Herbert Hoover, Address at the Republican National Convention, Chicago, Illinois, July 25, 1960, HP, HHPL. 5. Frederick B. Tolles, Quakers and the Atlantic Culture (New York, 1960), p. 42. 6. Ibid., p. 64. 7. Robert H. Ferrell, American Diplomacy in the Great Depression; Hoover-Stimson Foreign Policy, 1929-1933 (New Haven, 1957), p. 19. 8. Alexander De Conde, “Herbert Hoover and Foreign Policy: A Retrospective Assessment,” in Herbert Hoover Reassessed: Essays Commemorating the Fiftieth Anniversary of the Inauguration of Our Thirty-first President, sponsored by Mark O. Hatfield (Washington, D.C., 1981), p. 319. 9. Joan Hoff-Wilson, “Herbert Hoover’s Foreign Policy,” in Martin L. Fausold and George T. Mazuzan, eds., The Hoover Presidency: A Reappraisal, (Albany, 1974), p. 165. 10. Stimson, diaries, x, 112-14, November 1, 1930. 11. Ibid., x, 228, reel 2, December 15, 1930. 12. Ibid., xxiii, 172-88, reel 4, September 14-18, 1932. 13. Hoover to Ray Lyman Wilbur, March 8, 1948, HP, HHPL; Graham Stuart, The Department of State: A History of Its Organization, Procedure and Personnel (New York, 1949), chapter 24; Frank J. Merli and Theodore A. Wilson, eds., Makers of American Diplomacy from Benjamin Franklin to Henry Kissinger (New York, 1974), pp. 407-36. 14. New York Times, October 4, 1929. 15. Ferrell, American Diplomacy, p. 94. 16. William Appleman Williams, Americans in a Changing World: A History of the United States in the Twentieth Century (New York, 1978), pp. 234-35. 17. Henry L. Stimson and McGeorge Bundy, On Active Service: In Peace and War (New York, 1947), pp. 222-24. 18. Stimson, diaries, xix, 18-19, reel 4, November 7, 1931. 19. Ibid., xix, 23-24, reel 4, November 9, 1931. 20. Ibid., xx, 4, reel 4, January 3, 1932. 21. Walter Lippmann to H. L. Stimson, December 22, 1931, Stimson Papers, Yale University Library, New Haven, Connecticut. 22. Stimson, diaries, xx, 103, reel 4, January 26, 1932. 23. Ibid., xxii, 14, reel 4, May 19, 1932. 24. Ibid., xxi, 60, reel 4, March 12, 1932. 25. Stimson and Bundy, On Active Service, p. 262. It must be noted that by the time both Stimson and Hoover wrote their memoirs, “the two were bitter enemies of Stimson’s service to FDR whom Hoover detested” (Selig Adler to author, May 25,

1981). 26. Herbert Hoover, The Memoirs of Herbert Hoover, vol. II, The Cabinet and the Presidency 1920-1933 (New York, 1952), p. 377. 27. Elting E. Morison, Turmoil and Tradition: A Study of the Life and Times of Henry L. Stimson (Boston, 1960), p. 369. 28. Alexander De Conde, Herbert Hoover’s Latin-American Policy (Stanford, Calif., 1951), p. 18. 29. Robert R. Moton to Hoover, memorandum, July 28, 1930, HP, HHPL. 30. Stimson, diaries, x, 113, reel 2, November 1, 1930. 31. Stimson and Bundy, On Active Service, p. 182. 32. De Conde, Herbert Hoover’s Latin-American Policy, pp. 49-50. 33. Stimson and Bundy, On Active Service, p. 211; Donald R. McCoy, Calvin Coolidge: The Quiet President (New York, 1967), p. 190. 34. Stimson and Bundy, On Active Service, pp. 204-5. 35. George Norris to John A. Simpson, June 30, 1931, Norris Papers, Library of Congress. 36. Ferrell, American Diplomacy, pp. 198-204. 37. Stimson, diaries, xxii, 35, reel 4, May 24, 1932. 38. De Conde, “Herbert Hoover and Foreign Policy,” p. 329. 39. Ibid., p. 328.

2

Herbert Hoover and the League of Nations

Clifford R. Lovin

After the defeat in the Senate of the Treaty of Versailles on November 19, 1919, few supporters of the treaty and the Covenant of the League it included despaired. Most believed the development of the international cooperation of the League was inevitable and that ratification was simply a matter of time. Part of the optimism was based on the popularity and prestige of League supporters. After Woodrow Wilson was tragically struck down by a stroke, one who picked up the torch of leadership for the League was Herbert Hoover. Sought by leaders in both parties for the presidential race of 1920, Hoover was universally popular for his outstanding work in Europe during the war and at the Paris Peace Conference. He was the epitome of the American self-made man. In an article in the liberal weekly, The Independent, in December 1919, entitled, “If He Were President: Herbert Hoover, the Man Who Fed Twenty-one Nations,” Hoover is depicted as an American demi-god.1 He was, according to the author, the kind of person scientists would create if they could construct the perfect person. Most of Hoover’s statements quoted in the article extolled the peace settlement. He agreed that although all world problems had not been solved, a start had been made and with the League things would get better. Hoover’s view of the future was positively euphoric as he saw the American influence spreading through the world with constructive results. He was rhapsodic (for him) in his description of the League: The League is an aspiration which has been rising in the hearts of all the world. It has become an insistence in the minds of all those in the world to whom the lives of our sons are precious, to all those for whom civilization is a thing to be safeguarded, and all those who see no hope for the amelioration of the misery of those who toil if peace cannot be maintained. To form a League of Nations for this purpose has been proposed by the leaders of both parties time and again. It has been proposed by leading spirits in all civilized nations. It comes from the heart and the mind of the world. The treaties themselves cannot be carried out without the League.2

The characterization of Hoover as the great protagonist for international cooperation may sound a bit skewed to those who think of Hoover primarily as a part of an isolationist American presidential administration in the 1920s. Although one may know of Hoover’s official support for the League at Paris and after, it is tempting to write this off as Gary Dean Best did as “Hoover’s fragile commitment to that ratification” which “was based on the need to bring about peace with the least delay.”3 If one looks at Hoover’s own writings, though he vigorously defended Wilson and his ideas, one is convinced that Hoover believed that the League was a flawed concept. He believed these flaws could have been overcome by strong international leadership. In the end, that leadership which should have been provided by Americans did not emerge, so Hoover’s public support of the League waned. However, the weight of the evidence makes it clear that Hoover was a sincere supporter of the League from the beginning of the Paris Peace Conference and that he vigorously sought the adoption of the treaty in three distinct campaigns, because it contained the League: (1) the effort to get Senate approval of the treaty in 1919; (2) the presidential campaign, in which he ran as a League candidate; (3) the effort to persuade Warren Harding, both before and after his election as president, that the League was essential to American prosperity and world peace. A look at contemporary evidence demonstrates that Hoover was an able and vigorous advocate of international cooperation through the League.

I During the Paris Peace Conference, Hoover was busy. His operation there was a continuation of his war work, and his position as head of the newly-created Supreme Economic Council made him one of the most influential men in Paris. Perhaps it is not surprising that Hoover took what the U.S. Peace Commissioners considered far more than his fair share of space at the Hotel Crillon.4 The immediacy of his task and its fundamental importance to peace warranted special attention. Since his work was current and practical Hoover did not involve himself in debates generally about the settlement or on specific parts of the treaty unless they impinged on European economic activity. There was a curious conversation, however, between Hoover and Wilson on the League in January in which Hoover suggested that the League should be created as informally as possible. The Economic Council had worked well that way until the French wanted a constitution, and Hoover felt that these more formal arrangements had hampered the activity of the council. In the recounting of this story a year later, Hoover said Wilson had disagreed with his idea and instead had wanted “a great state instrument” to be created.5 Actually, Hoover’s suggestion was in line with what Wilson had originally wanted, and the Covenant is certainly a simple instrument. When Hoover wrote his critique of the Treaty of Versailles on June 5, 1919, a document later cited to show Hoover’s displeasure with the entire settlement, he argued, not that the treaty was flawed, but that the reaction to the treaty might defeat its main objectives. The objective he feared might be lost was the one which was “to secure a League of Nations that may be able to further correct the international wrongs which have accumulated over centuries and deter the repetition of such wrongs in the future.”6 Hoover’s criticisms of the treaty are well known; and Hoover himself, in various writings, tries to indicate that he knew all along that the treaty was unfair and that the League was a fragile instrument of peace. However, if one looks closely at his 1919 views, one is struck by the fact that all his criticisms were aimed at provisions he thought would not work or would not be accepted. In other words, he only criticized the treaty in order to try to improve it, in order to try to assure that it served as the foundation for world order. After Germany had accepted the treaty, Hoover prepared a memorandum of support for the League for Benjamin Strong, N.Y. Federal Reserve Bank Governor, who was traveling in Europe. Strong wanted arguments he could use to influence New York businessmen. After describing modern economic interdependence, Hoover argued that “the American businessman who desires to preserve the foreign commerce of his country, to free it from the menace of disorder in Europe and to prevent the use of economic weapons by foreign competitors . . . must recognize at once that an international organization in which American representation will have a stabilizing influence must promptly be created through the League of Nations.”7 In the summer of 1919, Hoover was so interested in maintaining economic cooperation through the transition period from the peace conference to the League that he was willing to remain in Europe as the head of the Supreme Economic Council. His return to the United States was finally determined by Wilson’s ploy to put pressure on the Senate by refusing to participate in treaty-related activities until the Senate ratified the treaty. In July Hoover did a smart about face on this issue. He agreed that U.S. participation in what would become League

activities should be curtailed until ratification and returned to the U.S. to take up the cudgels and fight for Senate action. He did leave behind an assistant who kept him informed of all activities in Paris, a young lawyer named John Foster Dulles.8 The activities of Hoover in support of the League after his September return to New York were public and have been clearly chronicled.9 In his first interview, he stated his position concisely when he said, “I stand for the League of Nations as is—or as near as can be obtained. This treaty is constructive and the League of Nations makes it so.”10 Hoover made a masterful inaugural speech in accepting the presidency of his professional organization, the American Institute of Mining and Metallurgical Engineers. Among other things, he said, “If the world cannot quickly secure the settlement of peace and safeguards for the future through the League of Nations the whole of our two great interventions will have gone for nothing.”11 On October 2, 1919, Hoover delivered a long, carefully crafted speech in support of the treaty to his favorite audience, the students of his alma mater, Stanford University. He outlined all the reasons the League was necessary and said that the only alternative was war. “If the League is to break down, we must at once prepare to fight.” Surely, he argued, we cannot fail to give to the world what it is asking for, “our economic and moral weight, our idealism, and our disinterested sense of justice.”12 Until late November 1919, Hoover argued for ratification without reservations. In a meeting of the executive committee of the influential League to Enforce Peace, of which Hoover was a member, he argued long and hard for ratification without reservations, but he lost. The executive committee sent a letter to Secretary of State Robert Lansing asking him to present it to the President. It said in effect that since ratification was impossible without compromise, reservations should be accepted. Hoover had already sent a separate letter to the President suggesting the same.13 The President rejected this advice. II Immediately after the Senate’s failure to ratify the Versailles Treaty, Hoover took on a major new responsibility. At the request of President Wilson, Hoover served as vice chairman of what was called the Industrial Peace Conference. The constructive efforts of Hoover on this commission provided an opportunity for him to display his grasp of basic economic and social factors at work in the country. His work on the committee provided an additional springboard to political prominence.14 Hoover’s friends, who were interested in his political future, were involved in other activities. They were trying to determine whether “the Chief,” as he was affectionately called by those who worked for him, was a viable candidate for president of the United States. What they discovered was enormous popular support but little political support, especially in the Republican party. The only elected political figures to indicate support for Hoover were Democrats, men like Senator John Sharp Williams of Mississippi. Republican support came from members of the League to Enforce the Peace, men like George Wickersham and President Lawrence Lowell of Yale, and young men who had worked for him. Among these were Hugh Gibson, Ambassador to Poland, and Robert A. Taft, son of a former president and an assistant

to Hoover in Paris. Meanwhile, those still working with Hoover like his secretaries, Lewis L. Strauss and Christian A. Herter, were preparing the groundwork for a presidential campaign. Hoover was both aware and supportive of this campaign but felt his best chance for success lay in demonstrating such popular appeal that the Republican Convention would have no choice but to nominate him. In an exchange of letters in January 1920, two of the principals in Hoover’s presidential bid laid out their hopes and strategy for the campaign. Phillips Wyman said to Strauss: The politicians will not nominate Hoover unless they have to. The Republicans will nominate him only in case they fear that the Democrats will secure victory by nominating him. . . . But in the meantime, the attitude of the Republicans depends upon whether they think the Chief is strong enough to win for the Democrats. Therefore, a demonstration of that strength is necessary, and even though the Chief may desire and think otherwise, I believe that some machinery should be set up, preferably without his sanction, and without any expression from him for the present, whereby public sentiment may be expressed other than through the press.15

Strauss replied: You are going through the same stage as I did at first, that of extreme impatience. I am desperately afraid, more than anything else in the world of ‘spilling the beans’ too early. I have faith in the final outcome as I believe you have. Under the circumstances, let us be willing to go slowly and build surely.16

In addition to demonstrating Hoover’s popular appeal, it was necessary to keep Hoover above politics. Edgar Rickard, president of the American Relief Administration and one of Hoover’s chief lieutenants, wrote to Hugh Gibson in March that since Hoover does not want to direct his campaign, “it is awfully hard to keep out of this demonstration, and at the same time to direct it in such a way that will reflect the dignity which must be maintained in anything connected with the chief.”17 Hoover’s opening statement in the presidential campaign foreshadowed his strategy. In a release to the New York Times which appeared on February 9, Hoover indicated that the League was more important to him than political parties, “I must vote for the party that stands for the League.”18 A thoughtful exposition of the absolute necessity of American entry into the League was included in Hoover’s speech at Johns Hopkins University on February 24. He argued against partisanship and for a middle position which he said was represented by the “mild reservationists.”19 This non-partisan approach raised the issue of which party Hoover really belonged in and led to increased efforts on the part of Democrats to draft Hoover as their party’s nominee. Hoover even won Democratic primaries in New Hampshire (March) and Michigan (April). This led to increased interest in Hoover by Republicans. By March 1920, a Republican Hoover-for-President movement had been set up in Ohio by Robert A. Taft and Joseph C. Green.20 The real action among Republicans, however, turned out to be in Hoover’s home state of California. It was clear that the Republican convention would be a brokered affair; and if Hoover could gain the support of the California delegates to the Chicago convention, he would have a good chance at the nomination. The California Republican primary was tailor-made for Hoover. California Senator Hiram Johnson was running for president. He was a progressive irreconcilable, as contradictory as that may sound. He was opposed to any United States cooperative arrangement with foreign countries. Hoover gave in

to the urging of his friends to run in California to give his fellow Republicans a chance to vote for the League. In the short campaign that followed, Hoover’s amateur political supporters mounted a strong effort which failed to deny Johnson victory but which forced him to campaign much harder in California than he intended at the expense of his national campaign. Hoover lost, but he had stopped Johnson’s momentum and still was hopeful that a stalemated convention might turn to him as the candidate.21 The story of Harding’s nomination, of Hoover’s limited activity in his campaign, and of his support of the Committee of 31 is well known. Hoover obviously wanted to support Harding, but he also wanted Harding to be more straightforward in his support of the League. Hoover was finally reduced to accepting Harding’s distinction between “the” League and “a” league although he was clearly uncomfortable with it. What is less well known and what clearly demonstrates Hoover’s continuing support for ratification of the treaty is the incident involving his political support of fellow Californian, Samuel Shortridge for the Senate. Shortridge had been Johnson’s choice and was considered an isolationist. By late October, the supporters of Shortridge were convinced that they needed the endorsement of Hoover to insure his election and sent a request to that effect. Hoover responded that there were two positions on the League —the irreconcilable one and the one of the Committee of 31. He would endorse Shortridge if he publicly identified himself with the latter.22 No irrefutable documentation of Shortridge’s response has been disclosed, but Hoover made a statement which was interpreted by both his followers and Johnson’s that Shortridge had agreed.23 Hoover had done his part for the League, for Warren Harding, and for the Republican party. He was ideally situated to become a member of Harding’s cabinet; there he could continue his battle for American acceptance of the League of Nations. III Depending on one’s view of the wisdom and moral character of President Harding, his appointment of Charles Evans Hughes and Herbert Hoover to the secretaryships of state and commerce, respectively, was either a courageous and a brilliant action or a political payoff. Either he was determined to create a cabinet of the best minds or he was simply trying to hold the party together by making sure all elements of the party were represented in his cabinet. Actually Harding offered Hoover a place in his cabinet at their first meeting after the election in December. The question was whether Hoover would take it. He had several attractive alternatives both in business and politics, and it took the persistent advice of his closest associates, the request of Charles Evans Hughes, and the agreement by Harding that he could reorganize and expand the Department of Commerce to convince Hoover to accept. One of Hoover’s chief goals as a cabinet member was to assist Harding in getting the Senate to reconsider the Treaty of Versailles. Apparently, early in his administration, Harding directed that Hoover and Hughes see what the possible outcome of such a reconsideration would be. It did not take them long to discover that without vigorous presidential leadership ratification had no chance; and with it the chances were slim. That decided the issue as far as Harding was concerned, and he never seriously considered the possibility of United States

entry into the League again.24 Harding’s later remark could easily have been used here, that is that the League was “dead as slavery.”25 Hughes considered resigning but decided against it. If Hoover considered such action, no record of it exists. Hoover plunged into his duties of Secretary of Commerce with vigor and he achieved the same kind of success there which had characterized his tenure in all previous positions. He was sometimes irritating to the other cabinet members, as the phrase used about Hoover that he was “Secretary of Commerce and assistant secretary of everything else” illustrates. In all his busy-ness however, he did not forget about internationalism or the League of Nations. One of his first tasks was to advise his colleagues in the eastern internationalist Republican establishment. At first optimism remained. In a letter, Yale President Lawrence Lowell said: After seeing, not long ago, Secretaries Hughes and Hoover in Washington, I came away very much encouraged. I do not expect any formal agreement for some time, but I think we shall practically slide into the League.26

An article in the Washington Herald, which was alleged to be Hoover’s mouthpiece, suggested that it was time to push for the League again. Lowell wrote asking Hoover if this were his opinion and what the League to Enforce the Peace should do. Hoover replied with what was to become his standard advice over the next few years: Certainly I do not advocate any agitation with regard to the League at the present time. We are making steady progress, step by step, in security for peace. You and I have no preference as to the method by which this is accomplished.27

A glimmer of hope appeared in late 1921 when Harding used the phrase, “an association of nations” in several speeches. At least one Leaguer thought that vigorous American action for a new “association of nations” might lead to a better League.28 Unfortunately for supporters of the League, Harding was only playing the semantic game he understood so well. He told Hiram Johnson that the press had simply misunderstood his reference to an association of nations because he had no more in mind “than the mere talking over by nations among themselves of problems that might be of interest or good to them.”29 In one of the harshest criticisms of Hoover, Newton D. Baker, a colleague at Paris, said in 1928 that Hoover was ignoring the issue of the League, which he previously had believed in, as he had earlier when he “had sat by, silent, as a member of Harding’s cabinet while the League and the Court were being jettisoned.”30 Whatever judgment one may make about Hoover during his years as a Harding cabinet member, it cannot be said that he was silent. His letters to Harding on a variety of international topics including the League, his contacts with European-based friends who were close to the League, and his advice to friends still involved in the active fight to bring the U.S. into the League all indicate that his sincere support of the League had not flagged. The closest contact Hoover had with the League itself was through Arthur Sweetser, the highest ranking American in the Secretariat. Sweetser was a journalist who worked with the American Commission to Negotiate Peace in 1919. He began to work for League Secretary General Eric Drummond in July 1919 and remained with the League until its demise in 1942. The connection between Sweetser and Hoover was through the latter’s personal secretary, Christian A. Herter. The correspondence began when Sweetser began sending League

documentary material to Herter for Hoover. Herter encouraged Sweetser to send more because Hoover was interested. Herter first expressed the view that he might have to vote for the Democratic nominee for president to show his support for the League. By September, he had undergone the metamorphosis of his mentor: Harding “will be forced by the progressive element in the party and by sheer inability to do otherwise, to accept the present League of Nations.”31 Pessimism soon replaced this attitude in 1921 when Sweetser wrote directly to Hoover at the suggestion of Herter “out of the deep distress of my mind” to say that Europeans are now convinced that “America has rejected the fundamental idea of the League of Nations almost beyond all hope of even fundamental revision.”32 Hoover’s reply through Herter was that the outlook for any relationship between the U.S. and the League was not “promising.”33 Meanwhile, Hoover responded to friends and followers that he supported their efforts to encourage the United States to enter the League. He was called to task, however, in 1923 by two erstwhile friends who believed he had really betrayed the cause of the League by continuing to support Harding. Former Senator Everett Colby, speaking at a League of Nations Non-Partisan Association luncheon on March 3, 1923, criticized both Hughes and Hoover for having sat quietly in the Harding cabinet while the League was being killed.34 The fact that Hoover became the point man of the World Court issue by making the first speech for the administration on it in Des Moines on April 11, 1923, was still not enough for the critics. Hamilton Holt, journalist, educator, and delegate of the League to Enforce the Peace to Paris in 1919, wrote to Hoover demanding that he state whether he was “still loyal to the League.”35 That letter and derogatory comments by Colby and other persons who had signed the Statement of the 31 in 1919 aroused Hoover’s ire. In a testy letter to Colby, he said that he was now being called a Judas, and he wanted to know how he had betrayed Colby.36 Colby’s response, with independent confirmation from Hoover’s associate, Edgar Rickard, was that he knew Hoover had not meant to deceive, but that by supporting Harding as the best means of United States entry in the League he had been wrong. He ought to admit it and break with the Harding administration.37 This Hoover would not do. It is ironic that at this very point Hoover was close to achieving as a close adviser to Harding what he considered the first step toward League membership. By the summer of 1923, Hoover was clearly the member of the cabinet that Harding relied on most. Harding had chosen him to lead the fight for the Court; and, although that campaign was not going well in the summer of 1923, Harding showed no indication of backing off. Hoover was selected as one of the individuals to make the western trip with Harding in July 1923. The most important speech the president planned to deliver was a speech lauding liberal internationalism. It was probably written by Hoover, and it was delivered in San Francisco on schedule in spite of the fact that Harding was already fatally ill.38 It is probable that Hoover would have continued as a major foreign policy advisor and would have pressed hard for American accession to the World Court and closer cooperation with the League. However, even if Harding had been willing to lead the battle for international cooperation more vigorously, it was probably too late. The American people had returned to their traditional isolationism by 1923, and it seems unlikely that much could have been accomplished within the prevailing political atmosphere. The new president, Calvin Coolidge,

was much more in line with American beliefs than was Hoover. In his first annual message to Congress on December 6, 1923, President Coolidge pronounced the epitaph on the efforts to make the United States a member of the League of Nations when he said: Our country has definitely refused to adopt and ratify the covenant of the League of Nations. . . . I am not proposing any change in this policy; neither is the Senate. The incident, so far as we are concerned, is closed.39

Hoover remained a member of the cabinet, but his access to the president was limited and his influence restricted to his own department. His personal correspondence indicates that he remained interested in the League and the World Court, but he was no longer in a position to push the United States in that direction. Hoover would bide his time until his election as president in 1928 would give him another opportunity to nudge the United States in the direction of international cooperation. NOTES 1. The Independent, December 13, 1919, pp. 170-71, 208, 210, 212-13. 2. Ibid., pp. 212-13. 3. Gary Dean Best, The Politics of American Individualism: Herbert Hoover in Transition, 1918-1921 (Westport, Conn., 1975), p. 177. 4. Arthur Link, ed., The Papers of Woodrow Wilson, vol. 53, November 9, 1918 - January 11, 1919 (Princeton, 1986), p. 573. 5. Stimson Diaries, Reel 1, III, March 9, 1920, Yale University Library. 6. Herbert Hoover to Colonel E. M. House, June 5, 1919, Lewis L. Strauss Papers, HHPL. 7. Memorandum, Attached to Letter, Benjamin Strong to Russell Leffingwell, July 31, 1919, Benjamin Strong Papers, HHPL. 8. For a full discussion of these activities see Oscar P. Fitzgerald IV, “The Supreme Economic Council: A Study in Inter-allied Cooperation after World War I,” (Ph.D. dissertation, Georgetown University, 1971) and Clifford R. Lovin, “Food, Austria, and the Supreme Economic Council, 1919,” East European Quarterly, 12 (January 1979): 475-87. 9. Best, Politics of American Individualism, pp. 24-35. 10. New York Herald Tribune, September 14, 1919. 11. New York Times, September 17, 1919. The “two interventions” were U.S. military force and famine relief. 12. Stanford University Address, October 2, 1919, Herbert Hoover Papers, Hoover Institution Archives, Stanford, California. (Hereinafter cited as Hoover Papers, HIA). 13. William Howard Taft et al to Secretary of State Robert Lansing, November 23, 1919, and telegram, Herbert Hoover to Woodrow Wilson, November 19, 1919, State Department File, 763.72/19/712-112, National Archives, Washington D.C. 14. Best, Politics of American Individualism, pp. 38-53. 15. Phillips Wyman to Lewis L. Strauss, January 26, 1920, Strauss Papers, HHPL. 16. Lewis L. Strauss to Phillips Wyman, January 27, 1919, Strauss Papers, HHPL. 17. Edgar Rickard to Hugh Gibson, March 17, 1920, Hugh Gibson Papers, Box 58, Hoover Institution Archives, Stanford, California. 18. New York Times, February 9, 1920. 19. New York Times, February 24, 1920. 20. Joseph C. Green Papers, passim, Boxes 10 and 11, Hoover Institution Archives, Stanford, California. 21. See Best, The Politics of American Individualism, pp. 70-87 and Ralph Arnold, “Laying Foundation Stones, Chapter 1,” Southern California Quarterly, 38 (June 1955): 99-124. 22. Herbert Hoover to Will Hays, October 23, 1920, and telegram, Herbert Hoover to S.M. Shortridge, October 23, 1920, Box 337, Hoover Papers, HIA. 23. Los Angeles Times, November 1, 1920. 24. Kurt and Sarah Wimer, “The Harding Administration, the League of Nations, and the Separate Peace Treaty,” The Review of Politics, 29 (January 1967): 14-15. 25. New York Times, June 22, 1923. 26. Lawrence Lowell to Irving Fisher, July 8, 1921, Best Accession from Lowell Papers, Herbert Hoover Presidential

Library, West Branch, Iowa. 27. Letter, Herbert Hoover to Lawrence Lowell, December 22, 1921, Hoover Papers HHPL. 28. H.H. Fisher to Christian A. Herter, November, 30, 1921, Hoover Papers HHPL. 29. The Diary Letters of Hiram Johnson, vol. III, Hiram Johnson to Sons, December 3, 1921. 30. Clarence H. Cramer, Newton D. Baker: A Biography (Cleveland, 1961), p. 229. 31. Letters, Christian A. Herter to Arthur Sweetser, August 11, 1920, and September 17, 1920, Arthur Sweetser Papers, Library of Congress, Manuscripts Division, Washington, D.C. 32. Arthur Sweetser to Herbert Hoover, April 22, 1921, ibid. 33. Christian A. Herter to Arthur Sweetser, June 1, 1922, Hoover Papers HHPL. 34. New York Times, March 4, 1923. 35. Hamilton Holt to Herbert Hoover, April 26, 1923, Hoover Papers HHPL. 36. Herbert Hoover to Everett Colby, May 3, 1923, Hoover Papers HHPL. 37. Everett Colby to Herbert Hoover, May 8, 1923, and Edgar Richard to Herbert Hoover, May 10, 1923, Hoover Papers HHPL. 38. David H. Jennings, “President Harding and International Organization.” Ohio History 74 (1966): 163. 39. New York Times, December 7, 1923.

3

“A Little of the Road to Peace”: Herbert Hoover and the World Court

Michael Dunne

INTRODUCTION It is a truism that people do not make history in circumstances of their own choosing. Likewise, historians do not write their histories in the abstract. Any number of factors combine to shape their finished work—not least the nature and availability of source material. The case of Herbert Hoover confirms this general rule. Ever since the bulk of his papers was opened to scholars in the mid-1960s, the volume and quality of historical writing on Hoover’s life and work has grown. Earlier hagiography and demonology have given way to less partisan accounts. The work of the last four decades is neither uniformly hostile nor favorable, its prevailing characteristic being the critical perspective it brings to Hoover as practitioner and advocate of the “New Era.”1 The term, New Era, like all such labels, must be carefully handled. When used by contemporaries it connoted positive values: a realistic postwar philosophy of governmental and social practice to succeed Theodore Roosevelt’s New Nationalism and Woodrow Wilson’s New Freedom. Later, of course, the New Era was supplanted by Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal. All these more familiar phrases alert us to the danger of seeing a period or a presidency as synonymous with a popular slogan, especially when a term passes from general approbation into condemnation. A detailed study of Hoover in his public career as secretary of commerce (1921-1928) and president (1929-1933) shows the difficulty of trying to fit the man and the official into a single analytical category. At its best and most subtle, the historiography of Hoover and the New Era pries the man and the category apart, demonstrating that they were not interdefinable. Even so the popular image remains strong. Like the later New Deal, the New Era is still tied to one man above all his contemporaries and associated with one period. If the New Era began in the aftermath of World War I, when did it end? In 1933 with Roosevelt’s New Deal? Or in 1929 with the collapse of the Stock Market, the conventional date for the onset of the Great Depression? For some historians the Great Depression proved the limitations of the New Era: its barren economic, social, and political philosophy had contributed to a cataclysm which devastated industry and led to 25% unemployment. In this picture Hoover the President is left clinging to the ideological wreckage of the New Era he had promoted while secretary of commerce. The Depression was not, of course, a purely domestic phenomenon and the study of American international relations during the Hoover years has produced some exceptional writing. In general, international historians have wisely avoided the term New Era as an analytical category, and when they have employed it, it has been largely for rhetorical reasons, to get their inquiries launched into the context and detail of Hoover’s activities. This is not to suggest that scholars such as Melvyn Leffler are atheoretical empiricists, but rather that they recognize the analytical sterility of modeling all Hoover’s behaviour through a problematical concept such as the New Era.2 Whatever the precise reasons for this historiographical caution, students of Hoover’s foreign policies broadly agree that the Depression constitutes a separate chapter in the Hoover story. Their disagreement centers upon whether the Depression had a

catalytic force, simply intensifying existing problems and aggravating structural faults, or whether international politics—and the American role in them—underwent a radical change with the onset of the Depression. Another way of expressing the same question is to ask whether continuity or discontinuity is more characteristic of the Hoover years; if the latter, how far was the Depression the cause of the changes? The familiar subjects for testing these hypotheses are quite numerous: the inter-allied debts; reparations; disarmament from the 1921-1922 Washington Conference to that in Geneva in 1932; the Kellogg-Briand Pact; the non-recognition doctrine; the origins of the Good Neighbor policy; the tariff—the list is long. Generally absent or only briefly mentioned is American adherence to the Permanent Court of International Justice (PCIJ); or, in more popular language, American membership in the World Court. Before we examine the World Court issue in depth a little more needs to be said about the historiography of Hoover and international relations. Scholars may have minimized the New Era model, but they have not lacked analytical substitutes. Without exception the chosen alternative has a dialectical or oppositional mode. Whether the subject is Hoover himself, his colleagues, or his practice, the common perspective portrays Hoover as a composite or, correlatively, as the partner to a second pole. In either case the resulting amalgam or point of opposition may be evaluated positively or negatively. For example, Carl Christol describes Hoover as the finest blend of realism and idealism, while Alexander DeConde calls him a “mosaic of inconsistencies.” Leffler stresses the clash between Hoover’s estimation of himself and his actual achievements. David Burner writes more charitably, if ironically, of Hoover’s “Pauline strategy of being in the world but not of it”; elsewhere Burner uses more conventional language to describe the “hard-headed moralist,” the “practical idealist.”3 The dialectical trope is found in the characterization of Hoover’s foreign policies, which are the outward projection of this inner, personal duality. In foreign affairs, wrote William Starr Myers, Hoover sought to “preserve [the American] national integrity and independence of action” while “cooperating] in the meeting of great world problems,” a double goal that Joan Hoff Wilson was later to call “independent internationalism.” In the early 1980s J. W. Chambers epitomized this style of analysis, adding a little flourish of eighteenth-century legitimation. Hoover’s policies, wrote Chambers, struck a “balance between nationalism and internationalism”; his goal was “coordinated independence,” itself a fusion of two strong polarities in his own personality and intellect. In Chambers’ formulation, Hoover’s internationalism derived from “Jeffersonian agrarian idealism and individualism [aligned] with an engineer’s recognition that a complex modern world needed expert planning.”4 Hoover himself expressed the fear that his early life as an engineer—and a financially successful one—had been “oversold” and that he would be held up as a technical genius, only to be cast down when technique was found to be insufficient. But that foreboding and the disclaimer have not stopped historians from making this the most common characterization of Hoover’s behaviour: the rationalist betrayed by his own emotions or defeated by intractable domestic and international problems.5 On the interpersonal level Hoover is cast in conflict with colleagues as much as opponents. The most famous example has taken on stereotypical lines: Hoover’s relations with his Secretary of State, Henry Lewis Stimson. In his diary and to friends, Stimson loved to stress

his own aggressiveness, his commitment to the “psychology of combat,” his readiness to seize the initiative. Hoover, by contrast, reacted to events; he was “overfearful.” There is some truth to this distinction, though not enough, I think, to make a palpable political difference. Rather Stimson tended to think he had won a victory when he had scarcely scored a point.6 Certainly Hoover’s Quakerism was not synonymous with pacifism. How could it be, for the U.S. Commander in Chief?7 Such then is the popular and professional image of Hoover: the successful technocrat who became the archetypical New Era politician—indeed became identified with the New Era— and whose policies foundered with the New Era itself; a man of conflicting impulses, or, alternatively, a man who subordinated emotion to reason—but not always with beneficial results. How did such a dominant political figure analyze and handle the World Court? And how far do his actions in this area corroborate or challenge the standard interpretation of Herbert Hoover? While the literature on Hoover had flourished since the 1960s (so that for all his “averageness,” Hoover is one of the most “controversial” presidents), the World Court issue remains, historiographically, essentially where it was at the end of World War II, the analytical contours determined by the writings of Denna Frank Fleming.8 In the course of the next six decades only two scholars have written at any length on Hoover and the Court: the historian Robert Accinelli and the international lawyer, Carl Christol.9 Considering his own contribution to the Court story, Hoover is surprisingly silent in his voluminous writings. More surprisingly still, however, Hoover’s associates credited Franklin Roosevelt with “warmly urg[ing]” American membership of the Court—a great exaggeration, as we shall see, though apparently designed to commend Roosevelt at a time when he and Hoover were such bitter political enemies.10 Given such confusion and the sheer ignorance which still surrounds the World Court issue in American politics, a brief survey of the salient events will provide the necessary information to evaluate Hoover’s own role and his estimation of the Court’s “possibilities of peace.” I The story of the United States and the World Court—or, as it was officially called in English: the Permanent Court of International Justice (PCIJ)—begins essentially in the summer of 1920, when an Advisory Committee of Jurists met at The Hague under the auspices of the League of Nations and drafted a statute (or constitution) for the international court envisaged in Article XIV of the League Covenant.11 Later in the year, and after significant amendments by both the Council and the Assembly, the revised statute was presented for signature to individual member-states of the League and states “mentioned in the Annex to the Covenant,” chief of which was the United States of America. By mid 1921 a sufficient number of signatures and ratifications had been notified to the League for the Court to be officially inaugurated at The Hague in February 1922. Almost immediately the campaign began for American adherence (i.e. to the Protocol of Signature), or to speak less technically, American membership. The first stage in the campaign

lay in the framing of separate conditions for American membership. This was an obvious necessity, since though membership was open to the United States as a state mentioned in the Annex, as a non-League state the United States could not participate in the concurrent CouncilAssembly elections to the Court’s bench of judges. There was, moreover, an American fear that membership in the Court might entail the assumption of obligations under the Covenant. But these difficulties and doubts were initially resolved, and by the fall of 1922 certain terms had been agreed between the League Secretariat, the major League powers (notably the British) and the Executive. These terms, in the form of reservations to a proposed resolution, were presented to the Senate by President Harding in February 1923. Three years later, in January 1926, these terms were approved overwhelmingly by the Senate (76 to 17), but with other conditions attached during proceedings in committee and on the Floor. Using non-technical language we can say that in January 1926 American membership of the World Court was approved by the President (now Calvin Coolidge) and Senate, subject to eight conditions, half of which had already been accepted by the League, half of which had not, even though the bulk of the latter merely re-stated traditional positions. For example, the Monroe Doctrine and “domestic questions” (including the tariff and immigration) were “reserved” or excluded from the jurisdiction of the Court; while the Senate insisted upon the right to prevent the submission of cases to the Court by the Executive acting alone: both would have to co-operate through use of the treaty-making power. Yet however important these new conditions were, contemporaries and historians have agreed that by far the most controversial reservation referred to the Court’s so-called advisory jurisdiction or power to adjudicate a suit without (it was argued) the consent of one or more of the parties in dispute. The issues involved were enormous, and while all could agree on the depth of the controversy, there was no unanimity about the detail. Suffice it to say that the Senate sought to determine jurisdictional limits to the Court’s advisory function, a determination which both friends and enemies of American adherence called a “veto power.” For nearly a decade this insistence on a “veto power” was the crux of disagreement inside the United States, if not inside the Senate, where there was always a large majority in its favor. As even this skeletal chronology will show, it was the “red thread”12 that ran through all informed discussions of the Court issue until 1935. Nor was the Senate alone and simply intransigent. The League itself never resolved the underlying problem, which lay in the claim of “interested parties” either to oust the jurisdiction of courts or implement a veto in political bodies. From January 1926 until September 1929 the conditions approved by the U.S. government passed out of its hands and into those of the League. (There was no disagreement between the Senate and the executive branch: Coolidge and Secretary of State Frank B. Kellogg endorsed the additional reservations completely.) At two Geneva Conferences, the first in September 1926, the second in September 1929, together with an intervening review by a (second) Jurists’ Committee in March 1929, the reservations were thoroughly discussed and (less obviously) modified. Back in Washington the new administration of Herbert Hoover reluctantly accepted the revisions (the major issue being, not surprisingly, the advisory jurisdiction), and in December 1929 Hoover himself authorized the signing of the Court protocols (plural: see below). But the situation was not as simple as this language suggests, for during that year the League had agreed to a new statute for the Court, which meant that the executive was seeking

membership of an organization different from that established in 1920. The problem for the League was that it wanted to revise the Statute of 1920 but hesitated to do so because this had been the document conditionally accepted by the U.S. government in January 1926. The solution finally devised was for the League to offer the existing Court signatories (or members) and the prospective signatory (the United States) two statutes, the original of 1920 and the Revision Protocol of 1929, together with a separate Protocol of American Accession. All parties were then required to accept all three documents, the Revision and Accession Protocols of 1929 superseding the 1920 Protocol once all the existing signatories and the United States had signed and ratified the new statute. It may be readily inferred that this most intricate procedure placed the United States, a non-member, in the paradoxical position of being able to prevent existing members of the Court from changing their mutual relationships. Such legal and procedural technicalities were, however, immediately overtaken by more dramatic events. First the Hoover administration held back the signed protocols from the Senate because domestic legislation was more important—the Wall Street crash having intensified the long-running economic crisis of the 1920s and no one could be found in Congress willing to put the Court protocols above legislation designed to aid recovery. This was in the winter of 1929-1930. A year later, and after the protocols had been submitted to the Senate, the administration was unable to satisfy even Republican pro-Court Senators that the veto power on the advisory jurisdiction had been preserved in the League discussions. Finally and most importantly in March 1931 the German and Austrian governments negotiated a provisional treaty (Vorvertrag) for a customs union. The response of France, her allies in the Little Entente (Czechoslovakia, Romania and Yugoslavia), and Italy was immediate. They saw the spectre of Anschluss, the political union of Germany and Austria outlawed by the Paris Peace Treaties. Europe was said to be on the brink of war. As Herbert Hoover phrased it, this was a “second Sarajevo.”13 The League Council, with general responsibilities for the maintenance of peace and specific obligations to preserve the independence of Austria, referred the customs-union project to the Permanent Court for an advisory opinion on its legal compatibility with the World War I peace treaties, specifically the Treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Laye (1919), and related Austrian commitments under the Geneva Reconstruction Protocols (1922). For American proponents of adherence the referral was a sign of the Court’s conciliatory function, its ability to remove dangerous international problems from the realms of politics and war and resolve them judicially, impartially and peacefully. For the opponents the referral was further proof both of the Court’s subordination to the League and of the permanence of the imposed and discredited peace treaties. But both proponents and opponents agreed that the outcome of the political and judicial crisis would affect the prospects of American membership not just of the Court but of the League itself—still the ultimate goal of the most active pro-Court lobbyists. In September 1931 the German and Austrian governments renounced their attempt to form a customs-union—the victims, it was said by friends and foes of the scheme, of severe financial, economic and political pressure from France and her allies. Contemporaneously the Court found against the legality of the scheme by a single vote, and even many supporters of the Court, abroad no less than in the United States, interpreted the narrow decision as politically

inspired. Likewise at home and abroad the judgment was seen to weaken, perhaps fatally, the chances of American adherence. For if the German and Austrian governments had not renounced the scheme, would the League have enforced the judgment even at the risk of war? And would not American membership—for all the disclaimers over the advisory jurisdiction and the assumption of obligations under the Covenant—have committed the U.S. government to join in the enforcement? It was a train of thought given peculiar strength by American adherence to the Kellogg-Briand Pact only three years previously. Though the “Manchurian Crisis” intervened to halt these particular speculations—not least in showing the divisions within the League and the uncertainty of the commitments flowing from the Kellogg-Briand Pact—the Austro-German Customs Union advisory opinion continued to influence Senators and publicists, each person tending to interpret the referral and the adjudication according to previous positions. Throughout 1932 the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations held numerous meetings on the Court protocols but was unable to agree on whether the terms of 1926 had been unambiguously accepted by the League; or, even if they had been, whether they still constituted sufficient protection for the United States against involvement in the politics of the League. In the summer of 1932 the party conventions faced the same questions, and then ducked them. Both the Republicans and the Democrats stated their approval of American adherence but between them they failed to decide whether this meant on the Senate’s 1926 terms or those offered by the League in return. Throughout 1933 and for much of 1934 the Roosevelt administration and the Court’s proponents in the Senate agreed not to push the issue of adherence, though this formulation may appear to suggest that Roosevelt was keener for the Court than he actually was. As pro-Court lobbyists correctly said, Roosevelt would get behind a campaign only if he were confident of success: he would not be a front-runner. Finally, in the fall of 1934 Roosevelt bent to lobbygroups outside the Senate (notably the American Foundation and the National World Court Committee), to individuals in the Department of State (chiefly Frank Sayre and Wallace McClure), to Joe T. Robinson, of Arkansas, the Senate majority leader, and, importantly, to his own wife, Eleanor, one of the leading pro-Court activists. They were given the go-ahead while Roosevelt would maintain a low profile. Thus Roosevelt could reap the benefits of success, or alternatively he could distance himself in the event of failure. And failure it was. On January 29, 1935 after two weeks of first desultory and then intense senatorial debate and extrasenatorial activity the Court protocols were put to a crowded and noisy Senate. When the rollcall was completed the ayes numbered 52, the nays 36. With 88 votes being cast, the required two-thirds majority was seven votes short. In the popular phrase of the time, the World Court had been defeated.14 II This review of the Court issue in American politics is, admittedly, only a chronicle of major events; but its chief purpose has been to provide a grid for locating and evaluating Hoover’s objectives and activities. The first point to note is that the weight and direction of Hoover’s contribution differ from the pattern of the general history sketched above. His

involvement can be best understood in terms of four main stages or episodes, with a brief concluding sequel. The first period lasted from the spring of 1919 to the winter of 1920-1921, during which time Hoover advocated American membership of the League of Nations, essentially with the Lodge Reservations. The second period culminated in spring 1923, when Hoover led the Harding administration’s campaign for American membership in the Court. Then followed a rather low-key, unobtrusive period until Hoover’s inauguration and the return of the revised Court protocols to Washington in 1929. Fourth and effectively last came Hoover’s own legislative intentions and minimal actions during his presidency, with the unsuccessful sequel being the Court defeat in January 1935. Apart from the grid of Court history, other political features of the 1920s and early 1930s need to be borne in mind if we are to understand and evaluate Hoover’s actions. Leaving aside such complex international issues as debts, reparations, and disarmament, important domestic factors conditioned Hoover’s actions. Despite the contemporary jokes and criticisms that Commerce Secretary Hoover was undersecretary of everything else, even as President, it hardly needs to be said, Hoover was not a free agent.15 We do not need to revert to the glib cliché of bemoaning the limitations on executive power to realize that the 1920s registered two striking features in the history of national politics. One was the vitality of the separate elements in the Republican coalition; the other was the assertion of congressional especially senatorial power as a reaction to “Wilsonianism.” Both forces fused in the constant threats of electoral bolts, presidential dumping, party splits, and realignment. If Franklin Roosevelt and Jim Farley did fashion a New Deal coalition in the 1930s, this itself is partial evidence of Republican disparateness in the 1920s. The Republicans had split in 1912, and let the Democrats into the White House. In 1916 the traces of the earlier split were still visible, and 1920 showed the strength of the old insurgents and anti-League conservatives in the Republican coalition gathered around Warren Harding. Prominent on all these occasions was Hiram Warren Johnson, Hoover’s political enemy in California, who was a “bitter-end irreconcilable” opponent of the League and (as Johnson called it) the League’s Court.16 The Hoover-Johnson feud does not in itself explain their beliefs and actions on the League-Court issue, but it does remind us both that League and Court were connected and that personal politics infused the larger public world. The first stage in Hoover’s defense of the Court as part of the League system demonstrated both points. One of the earliest, warmest and most famous tributes to Hoover came from the British economist, John Maynard Keynes. Himself a technical expert at the Paris Peace Conference, Keynes wrote of Hoover’s contributing “reality, knowledge, magnanimity and disinterestedness” to the negotiations, qualities “which, if they had been found in other quarters . . . would have given us the Good Peace.”17 Already famous for his relief work in Belgium, then as U.S. Food Administrator and head of the American relief program, Hoover was, in the judgment of Keynes, the only person who “emerged from the ordeal of Paris with an enhanced reputation.”18 As these words were published Hoover was part-way through his own campaign for American acceptance of the League of Nations, one of the central creations of the Paris Peace Conference. Hoover’s League campaign can be conveniently divided into three uneven parts.19 The first and briefest was the period of Hoover’s attractiveness to some leading Democrats as they

pondered the forthcoming presidential election. A Bull Moose Republican in 1912 yet a national figure who had served under Wilson (even to the point of endorsing Wilson’s notorious appeal in October 1918 for the election of a Democratic congress), Hoover might be able to rally a cross-party progressive coalition and thereby rescue the Democrats from their likely defeat in 1920. But Hoover’s own hesitancy combined with intraparty hostility, and the mini-move for Hoover was finished by February 1920. This was before the second set of Senate votes on the League, and not the least reason for the opposition inside the Democratic Party was Hoover’s alignment with prominent Republicans in insisting that the Covenant should be approved only with the Lodge reservations. Hoover explained his public stance of non-partisanship by saying that he would “vote for the party that stands for the League.” By the end of March (i.e. after the second Senate vote), he was convinced that the Democrats would lose the elections. Not wishing, as he later put it, to become “a sacrifice” to a hopeless cause, he openly declared for the Republicans. If he were to help save the League, with the Lodge reservations, then the Republican Party was the only vehicle. Hoover now began the second stage of his campaign. Scholars differ as to Hoover’s ultimate goal: whether it was to win the nomination at the Chicago convention for himself or simply to ensure that the eventual nominee and the party platform were committed to the League. Either way Hoover was fated (along with his arch-rival, Johnson) to lose the race to the “strong reservationist” and “dependable party hack,” Senator Warren Gamaliel Harding of Ohio.20 If Harding was the compromise Republican standard-bearer, he also ran on a compromised League platform. As contemporaries correctly surmised, the relevant planks had been drafted by Elihu Root, who was absent at The Hague helping to write the Statute of the World Court.21 In deeply ambiguous language the Republicans declared: The Republican Party stands for agreement among the nations to preserve the peace of the world. We believe that such an international association must be based upon international justice, and must provide methods which shall maintain the rule of public right by the development of law and the decision of impartial courts, and which shall secure instant and general international conference whenever peace shall be threatened by political action, so that the nations pledged to do and insist upon what is just and fair may exercise their influence and power for the prevention of war.22

Such a straddle was barely sufficient to keep Johnson, William Borah and the other Republican irreconcilables in line: they could use this formula to claim a mandate against the League and induce Harding to follow them. So for the rest of the summer and fall of 1920 Hoover conducted part three of his campaign. From the convention until election day Hoover operated a double strategy: (1) to endorse Harding’s candidacy while seeking explicit commitments from Harding in support of League ratification with reservations, and conversely (2) to prevent Harding from drifting to the irreconcilables in their absolute opposition to the League. The most famous episode in Campaign Mark III was the “Declaration of Thirty-One Pro-League Republicans,” the round-robin signed by Hoover, Root, Stimson and others expressing their belief that a vote for Harding was a vote for a (modified) League. The Declaration, or as it came to be called more accurately, the Appeal, was the culmination of numerous Hoover statements in support of a modified League. Harding, however, could not be tied down. His own proudly-proclaimed “adjustability” allowed him

(as Hoover later admitted) to carry “water on both shoulders” until election day, “wobbl[ing] a good deal” as he did so. Finally, with the election won, Harding “leaned the wrong way” for the umpteenth time and dumped the League.23 In his victory speech Harding pronounced the League “deceased.”24 Historians no less than contemporaries have disagreed about the meaning of the HardingRepublican victory for the League issue.25 Yet even if Harding had buried the League and Hoover seemed to have lost that battle, it was not true for the Court of International Justice. That common element in Harding’s campaign speeches, the party platforms and the Appeal of 31 had survived the election unscathed. Students of Hoover are silent on his initial activity for the embryonic court being created at The Hague, and Hoover’s own writings offer hardly any information. What we know from other sources is that from the early part of 1922 (when the Court was formally inaugurated) three other leading Republicans, all supporters of the Appeal of 31, worked on the drafting of terms for American adherence. The three were Root, who held no official position; Secretary of State Charles Evans Hughes; and Chief Justice William Howard Taft.26 Hoover, like Harding, kept out of these negotiations, which involved direct contact with the British government and indirect contact with the League secretariat. By late October 1922 Hughes was able to publicize the basis of the proposed terms, and he timed the announcement to help Senator Lodge in his campaign for re-election to the Senate.27 This political move was devised not merely to legitimate the terms to the strong reservationists; it was also part of Harding’s efforts to use the conservative pro-Leaguers in the party against the growing insurgency. Already commentators were speaking of Harding being dumped in 1924 and the vacant ticket being headed by a western progressive such as Johnson or, more likely, Borah.28 But, of course, in leaning towards former supporters of the League on the conservative wing, Harding risked widening the division within the Republican Party. His solution was to float the Court proposal but to time the actual submission of the Statute and Protocol of Signature to the Senate so late in the Session that legislative action was unlikely until December 1923 at the earliest, and might even be held over until the short, lame-duck session after the 1924 elections. The strategy of delay invariably blamed upon the Court’s opponents had been launched by the Court’s nominal supporters.29 On February 24, 1923, President Harding submitted the Protocol, together with the draft of four reservations, to a “surprised” Senate.30 (These terms were afterwards known as the Harding-Hughes conditions.) It was readily agreed that nothing substantive would be done by the Senate until at least December; but outside “the campaign” for and against adherence began, “officially opened,” one pro-Leaguer said, by Herbert Hoover.31 Hoover delivered only one major speech on the Court, but it exemplifies all the virtues that Hoover’s admirers find in the practical idealist. It was the product of much effort, passing through half a dozen drafts. Hoover also chose his audience carefully, the annual convention of the National League of Women Voters meeting on friendly territory in Des Moines, Iowa. Before he delivered his speech Hoover sought advice and guidance from Will H. Hays, Chairman of the Republican National Committee.32 In all these preparations Hoover showed his concern not to aggravate disagreements, especially within his own party. Indeed, as the

speech unfolded, Hoover insisted upon the historical commitment of the Republicans to the “elimination of the causes of war” and the “advancement by arbitral and judicial processes of [the] settlement” of international disputes. Hoover could not plausibly ignore the League, but he did relegate that divisive topic to the concluding passages of his speech. Yes, there was a “connection” but it was “remote,” and the “sole relationship” derived from the Council and Assembly being the “elective body” of the Court. Instead Hoover concentrated upon the counter-argument that the Court, though “erected under the auspices of the League” was “to a large degree the product of American thought and the handiwork of American[s],” Republicans and Democrats alike. References in the speech, together with Hoover’s own advocacy of a modified League, leave no doubt that Hoover was positioning himself between the anti-Courters like Borah (directly named) and latter-day Wilsonians who, true to form, were calling for unconditional American adherence.33 In the middle Hoover set himself as an advocate of “a minimum possible step,” i.e. membership in a Court whose “decrees” were “based upon the process of law, not upon political agreement,” and whose “enforcement rest[ed] wholly on public opinion and not upon force.” By joining, the United States would assume “no obligations . . . no commitment that limit[ed its] freedom of action.” Hoover’s language of compromise, the deprecating of violence and the invitation to use moral sanctions in international affairs, the advocacy of gradualism, the minimalist goals, the cross-party appeals—these are the marks of that pragmatism which has won so many admirers to Hoover. It was, in fact, in the Des Moines speech that Hoover used the words so frequently cited to capture the essence of this step-by-step approach. Wisdom does not so much consist in knowledge of the ultimate; it consists in knowing what to do next. Frequently those who contribute most to destroy good causes are those who refuse to work day by day within the field of practicable accomplishment, and who would oppose all progress unless their own particular ideas be adopted in full. Progress in the world must come about through men and women of high aspirations and high ideals. But no less must its real march be achieved through men and women whose feet are upon the ground, whose proposals are devoid of illusions, and above and beyond all that are within the practicability of day to day statesmanship.

Hoover himself was prepared to use this philosophy as the basis of a joke against the Borahs who condemned the existing Court and the Harding-Hughes proposals for having “no teeth.” They no doubt would have complained on the Wednesday night of Genesis, and would have gone to bed with a grouch because the Creator had not yet made a finished job of the sun and the moon, and would have called a mass meeting on Thursday morning to demand more forward action.

But after the pleasantries and the homespun philosophy, Hoover ended the Des Moines speech on a highly rhetorical defense of his gradualism. To attain universal peace is indeed one of the great ideals before all humanity. It is never wrong to recall that not only moral degeneration and loss of life flow from war, but that the delicate machinery of social organization, of production and commerce, upon which our civilization is founded, cannot stand such a shock again. There can be no confidence as to the continuity of our civilization itself unless we can build up preventive safeguards. In our generation we need no emphasis by survey of the grief in millions of homes from the last war, the miseries of famine and anarchy, the revolutions that have swept many countries and threatened others, the lowered standards of living, and the more terrible possibilities of a future war through the advancement of science—to warrant any of us submitting to the condemnation as idealists if we can but build even a little of the road to

peace.34

Even today Hoover’s peroration has a powerful effect, and it may seem churlish to scrutinize Hoover’s words too carefully. But to do so, less in an abstract way but rather more historically, will help to resolve the dilemma constantly presented by categorizing Hoover’s personality and politics in the dualistic terms so fashionable in the Hoover scholarship. To express the questions empirically rather than philosophically, what did Hoover’s speech mean? And what was its impact upon the larger political audience beyond Des Moines? The portrayal of Hoover as realist or pragmatist entails his accurately appreciating the content and context of events and his own actions. In other words, the image begs the question of Hoover’s specific knowledge and general awareness. On both counts the Des Moines speech was flawed. Hoover minimized—if indeed he fully realized—the many points of connection between the Court and the League, and he made an ineffective effort to distance himself from those American advocates who saw the Court as both a first step into the League and subordinate to it. There were indeed those who wanted American membership precisely to foster the Court’s independence of the League; but they were a minority. The most prominent and authoritative individual in this group was John Bassett Moore, himself the first U.S. judge on the Court Bench. But the real drive for adherence came from those who desired the closest links between both bodies and, ultimately, American membership in the League itself. Here the leading advocate was the Harvard law professor, and later judge of the Word Court, Manley O. Hudson.35 Hoover should have been alerted to these considerations by the presence on the platform with him of Lord Robert Cecil. Cecil had been an influential member of the British delegation to the Paris Peace Conference. He had taken part in the drafting of the Covenant, and he had been one of the British diplomats involved in devising the League’s contribution to the Harding-Hughes proposals.36 More importantly and dramatically, Cecil’s speaking engagement in Des Moines was a stop on his American lecture tour, a central theme of which was the ancillary role of the Court in the League system.37 There was another drawback to Hoover’s speech. As a simple historical fact the United States had been a leading state in earlier moves to establish a world court, and certainly the Republicans had been the party in power during the 1899 and 1907 Hague Conferences, to which the U.S. government sent official delegates.38 But the crucial significance of the new Permanent Court at The Hague (unlike the older, still existent Permanent Court of Arbitration, set up by these earlier conferences) was that it owed its existence and continuation to the League. And the leading members of the League, namely the European permanent members of the Council, intended the Court to serve the League’s purposes. In not openly addressing these issues, Hoover rendered his speech either irrelevant or—as his enemies claimed— disingenuous. In not telling the whole truth, Hoover told part of the truth and therefore looked at best naive, at worst deceptive.39 As contemporaries sometimes said, the “idealism” of Americans was readily exploited by their so-called friends and would-be allies.40 Such a fear may sound woefully and embarrassingly outdated, but Hoover himself experienced just such fears and the consequent revulsion from Europe. The newspaper magnate, William Randolph Hearst accused Hoover of being an anglophile; Hiram Johnson’s

supporters also mocked him for kow-towing to the British.41 But in the 1920s Hoover was in reality rather more the anglophobe, and francophobe.42 It is perhaps dangerous to look backwards from Hoover’s “moral continentalism” of the Cold War years; but a dash of skepticism would have made Hoover, the “practical idealist” a little more practical, a little more able to gauge the genuine apprehensions raised by the Court campaign in the early 1920s.43 These last reflections may appear unduly speculative. But there is little doubt about the immediate impact of Hoover’s speech, billed as the “opening gun” in the administration’s campaign for adherence.44 To judge from the numerous press reports and editorials kept by Hoover himself, the Des Moines speech widened the divisions in the Republican Party precisely because it had resurrected the League issue. The speech had been given advanced publicity as the first stage in a counterattack against “the isolationists” within the party; but the overall verdict was that Hoover had failed. It was not simply that he had been unable to match the appeal of the Western, progressive isolationists led by Borah, a man of “very considerable intelligence,” a man of “vision and conscience,” one of the rare politicians “with imagination and a faculty for provoking thought.” Hoover had not satisfied the Republican old guard, senators such as James Watson of Indiana, George Moses of New Hampshire, Frank Brandegee of Connecticut, plus the shifty Lodge.45 Commentators acknowledged that it was an exacting task to unite such feuding Republican groups: pro-Leaguers and anti-Leaguers, insurgents and standpatters. But certainly Hoover was the wrong man to try. He was said to lack finesse, familiarity with the detail of the Court, emotional appeal and, above all, political savvy. As one Illinois paper editorialized: the speech had been a “political blunder.” “Captain Harding had called the wrong slugger to the plate when a pinch hit was needed to clear the bases.”46 The purpose of these citations and the preceding analysis is not to diminish the value of Hoover’s ultimate goal of a world without violence, but rather to show the gap between the abstract ideal of the Court and the political reality of the League—the very gap that made Hoover’s arguments problematical and undermined his ability either to counter the isolationists or compromise the differences within the Republican party. At the time, though, contemporaries spoke more mundanely of the likelihood of a Republican split in 1924 on the League-Court controversy.47 In fact, when the split came in a more indirect way with the LaFollette-Wheeler Progressive ticket, the Court question was obscured. The Progressives ignored the topic, while the Republican and Democratic platforms were in essential agreement. The prediction of one leading American pro-Leaguer had been correct: “the issue [had] not [been] clearly defined.”48 The national campaigns and party platforms of 1924 may suggest that Hoover’s Des Moines speech had not been a failure; at worst it had been politically neutral. Hoover himself appeared to hold this view, though the evidence is drawn from silence. He does not mention the Des Moines speech in his memoirs but instead alludes to his later efforts to stiffen Harding on the Court.49 This was more wishful thinking about Harding’s true commitment, the Appeal of 31 over again. Harding did not live to deliver the relevant text; and its published form was so general and anodyne, so small a part in a mass of other observations on foreign affairs, that its evasive substance could not possibly outweigh Harding’s actual abandonment of the League

Court in his notorious St. Louis speech in June 1923.50 Indeed it was just this reversal by Harding during his western “voyage of understanding” that finally disillusioned the proCourters and so pointedly snubbed the only two advocates of the Court in his administration, Hughes and Hoover.51 The only scholar to have discussed the Des Moines speech, Carl Christol, writes that Hoover “devoted himself during the next 10 years to the task of bringing the United States into the Court.”52 Such a time-span takes us to the spring of 1933, when Hoover vacated the White House. In fact Hoover’s contribution to the Court cause, while important, was less than Christol’s phrasing suggests. Moreover Hoover played his major and most intelligent role just at the moment when the prospects for American adherence were at their lowest. Ironically, Hoover’s practicality, technical knowledge, and political awareness all led him to the conclusion that the goal of American membership was, at least temporarily, receding. That was during his presidency, the last four years of Christol’s decade. Before then came six years of quiet, low-key activity for Hoover. III With the death of Harding and Coolidge’s succession in August 1923, the Court dropped way down on the new administration’s program. In the Senate first Lodge, then George Wharton Pepper (Pennsylvania Republican) devised complicated and impractical schemes for divorcing the Court from the League; and Borah and the remaining irreconcilables left them to this. But in 1924 Lodge died; and although Borah gained increased power on becoming Chairman of the Committee on Foreign Relations, Pepper gradually moved into the ranks of the conditional supporters of the League’s Court. On the Democratic side the “mild reservationist” Tom Walsh of Montana and the Wilsonian Claude Swanson of Virginia gently advanced the Court cause; later they were joined by another “mild reservationist,” Irvine Lenroot (Wisconsin Republican). By December 1925 these senators (Pepper, Walsh, Swanson, and Lenroot) were leading the final stages in the Senate’s legislative action on the Court Protocol. They received little public help from Coolidge or his Secretary of State, Kellogg, another former “mild reservationist.”53 As we have seen, in January 1926 the Senate comfortably approved a motion for the signature of the Protocol, subject to certain conditions, and the Coolidge administration with its full endorsement forwarded the Senate’s terms to the League. Nowhere is there greater misunderstanding and misrepresentation in Court historiography than on the issue of the Senate’s additions to the original Harding-Hughes terms. Regrettably Hoover’s own account is misleading. In his own ambiguous phrase, Hoover describes the proposal as overwhelmed by a “torrent of destructive reservations.”54 Perhaps so, but the responsibility of the proponents for the reservations is clear from the public record of the Senate in committee and on the floor. Constant repetition by historians that the opponents of adherence destroyed the possibility of League acceptance by their unreasonable demands is quite beside the point. The opponents desired exactly such a result and openly, but unsuccessfully, backed wrecking amendments to that end. What they also did, and this is the half-truth repeated by their historical detractors, was to support the proponents in their

demands. The classic case is the Fifth Reservation on the controversial advisory jurisdiction. The original draft had been sponsored by Walsh; after it was finalized by the Senate, Swanson liked to claim it as his work.55 The unanimity of the Senate (endorsed by the administration) derived from the widespread suspicion of the Court’s connection with the League and the lingering skepticism of many Americans as to the European purpose of American membership. This unanimity goes far to exposing the superficiality of the argument that sees the progress towards adherence as a genuine retreat from isolationism. Rather it was an expression of a fundamentally unilateralist foreign policy, which (we may note) has characterized official relations with the League Court’s successor since World War II.56 Such a conclusion may owe too much to today’s perspective and be regarded as too speculative. We can be more exact, though necessarily brief, about Hoover’s own very minor part in these events. With the Senate in charge of the Court Protocol, Hoover became a member of the San Francisco Committee for the World Court, a move which could surprise no one in California but lacked the provocation of membership in Washington.57 The San Francisco committee was part of a nationwide network coordinated by the American Foundation, the leading lobby on behalf of the Court and the League. (Among the AF’s leading lights were Elihu Root and Eleanor Roosevelt.) During the Senate debate Hoover played no role whatsoever, one time at least when he did not try to backstop Cabinet colleagues. But after the Senate’s qualified approval of the protocol in January 1926, Hoover’s praise for Lenroot’s “magnificent generalship in the World Court fight” was generous and full of warm “admiration.”58 As we have seen, little happened in the United States on the Court question until 1929, when the three protocols returned from Geneva. The 1928 election campaign had ignored the Court: it was “dead” as an issue, Assistant Secretary of State William R. Castle wrote to Hoover.59 “Deadlock” might have been more accurate, a term used by the pro-Court Senator Frederick Gillett (Massachusetts Republican) to describe the impasse between the League and the U.S. government.60 Eventually the “deadlock” was broken during the winter of 1928-1929, thanks to a “semi-initiative” launched jointly by the League and from inside the United States. The odd phrase is that of the League’s Secretary-General, Sir Eric Drummond, who referred to a number of actions undertaken “simultaneously but unconnectedly” on both sides of the Atlantic.61 Chief among these coincidences was the signing of the Kellogg-Briand Pact, the intensified lobbying of groups like the American Foundation, and the convoking of a second Jurists’ Committee to draft revisions to the Court statute and (it was informally suggested) to re-examine the American conditions for adherence, especially the Fifth Reservation on the advisory jurisdiction.62 The 1929 negotiations were even more complicated than those of 1926, but what made them especially confusing to contemporaries and scholars was that the compromise effected by the 1929 Jurists’ Committee and later endorsed by the full League was often called the Root Protocol or Root Formula.63 It was not the first time that the name of Elihu Root had been used to ease American approval of the Court. In 1920 Root’s participation in the first Jurists’ Committee at The Hague had led many Americans to speak of the embryonic Permanent Court

of International Justice as the “Root Court.”64 Nine years later, Root’s presence at the second Jurists’ Committee (this time meeting in the League’s home city, Geneva) was justification for some to call the proposed Protocol of American Accession the Root Protocol, or even less technically, the Root Formula. On both occasions the eponymous role attributed to Root was meant to mitigate doubts and criticisms that important American interests had been sacrificed.65 In 1929 the issues were sharply focused on the advisory jurisdiction and the joint Senateexecutive determination to demand a de jure veto power over its use. In essence the Root Protocol offered such a right but made it conditional upon the League and Court upholding a plea against the Court’s competence—scarcely the absolute veto or power of ouster required by the U.S. government in 1926. Three generations of historians have misunderstood the essence of the 1929 compromise devised by Root, though the League records are unambiguous on this point.66 Indeed Root’s own defense of the protocol offers a clue to its true status. He was always reluctant to call the Root Protocol an exact equivalent of the original Fifth Reservation. (In Castle’s terminology it was certainly not “synonymous.”)67 Instead Root and like-minded advocates spoke of it as a “machinery” for the registering and discussion of American objections to the use of the advisory jurisdiction.68 In his Inaugural Address of March 1929, Hoover re-committed himself and pledged his administration to joining the Court. (League membership was explicitly, if unnecessarily, ruled out.)69 The obvious complication was soon to come in the form of the Root Protocol, which emerged within days of Hoover’s inauguration. Unless the Root Protocol could be taken as at least the functional (if not precise verbal) equivalent of the Fifth Reservation, then either Root and the League or Hoover and his administration would have to give ground. This is to inject a personal element into the dilemma; but then personalities do constitute a minor sub-plot in the larger political drama. For Hoover’s Secretary of State was Henry L. Stimson, a friend and law partner of Root and, like Hoover, a signatory of the Appeal of 31. From mid-March until late in 1929 Hoover was faced with the difficulty of determining his new administration’s policy toward the Root Protocol (which during the summer months had been twice approved by the League).70 The issue which had once united the Senate and executive, the Fifth Reservation, now in the guise of the Root Protocol threatened to divide the Senate internally and senators from the administration. Furthermore, as prominent politicians and observers acknowledged, the Court was not the most urgent business facing the country, even in foreign affairs. If Hoover were to push adherence forward, especially on the basis of the Root Protocol, it would lose Hoover important allies in the Senate, notably Borah, one of the few Western progressive Republicans to have supported Hoover wholeheartedly in the 1928 election.71 Borah had been one of the first to argue that the Root Formula (his preferred phrase) did not satisfy the 1926 conditions.72 His opinion was shared by old irreconcilables (like Hiram Johnson) and new ones (like Henrik Shipstead, Farmer-Labor Party, Minnesota).73 But the same criticism also came from pro-Court Senators, notably Walsh and Pepper; and from exSenator Lenroot.74 The pro-Court press wrote to the same effect.75 Inside the Department of State, right up to Secretary Stimson, memoranda were composed along equally damaging lines.

(Assistant Secretary of State Castle wrote wistfully of Borah coming to their aid; then “the battle would be over.” Such was the general despair.)76 The gap between the Root Formula and the Fifth Reservation was not the only problem for the administration. As we have seen, the negotiation of the Protocol of American Accession (to revert to the official language) had coincided with the revision of the original 1920 statute. As Hoover, Stimson, and Stimson’s predecessor, Kellogg, all realized, if the Court protocols were not signed by the U.S. government, then the proposed changes to the Court’s organization would be hazarded.77 (Some Americans placed more reliance upon the Revision Protocol than the Root Protocol to protect U.S. national interests.)78 Conversely, if the administration did sign the new protocols and these were rejected or nullified by the Senate (most obviously by repeating the Fifth Reservation verbatim), then the existing Court members would have changed their mutual relationships, largely to accommodate the United States, unnecessarily. By the fall of 1929 Hoover had decided to gamble. International criticism was mounting at the allegedly cavalier American diplomacy; domestically his opponents were calling for presidential leadership and legislative action to meet the long-running economic crisis. (This is another reminder that the Great Depression’s origins antedated Black Thursday, October 24, 1929.) Hoover remained personally committed to adherence. His solution was to authorize the signing of the protocols in the coming December but then to withhold them from the Senate for a year. Such a time-lag would placate critics abroad and at home, and postpone any legislative battles until after the primaries and the mid-term elections of 1930. (Pro-Court senators, including Lenroot, had suffered in the 1926 primaries, and friends and foes blamed this upon their pro-Court stance.)79 Hoover announced his two-fold strategy, a testimony (wrote one Washington correspondent) to the “strained legislative and political situation,” in the lofty context of his State of the Union address.80 Scholars who have written on Hoover and the Court admit his responsibility for delay, but they do not emphasize its greatest justification, namely that the League had not acceded to the American demand for a veto on the advisory jurisdiction. In correspondence with Stimson Hoover conceded that the American demand had been lost in the 1929 protocols; but like Stimson and Root himself, Hoover took refuge in the hope (it was scarcely an argument) that the League would be very reluctant to force a confrontation with the United States. As Root put it, the premise of the Root Protocol lay in the “high degree of improbability” that the League would ever override an American objection to the League’s call for an advisory opinion from the Court.81 In the historical accounts scholars have neglected the logical contradiction of Hoover pursuing a political goal, namely reconciling the incompatible positions of the U.S. government and the League over the veto. Instead they have depicted this very real dilemma as a product either of Hoover’s personality and psychological failings or of his miscalculating the political forces around him. In the first version Hoover’s hesitancy is contrasted unfavorably with the assertiveness of Stimson: Hoover lost the initiative and gave ground unnecessarily to his senatorial opponents. The alternative analysis represents Hoover as simply underestimating the numbers of his actual and potential senatorial supporters. Each model, of course, is seriously at odds with the general, favorable portrayals of Hoover, especially those that picture him uniting firmness of character with intellectual strength. What both explanations

overlook is the actual field of forces in which Hoover operated. Accinelli correctly describes some of the objective obstacles to Hoover’s rushing ahead with a blanket endorsement of the Root Protocol. But, like most historians of the Hoover presidency, he believes the Depression “ultimately . . . scuttle[d]” Hoover’s strategy. The simpler truth is that the prospects for Senate approval of the new protocols were exiguously thin even before the conventional onset of the Depression.82 When Castle advised Hoover in summer 1928 that the Court was a “dead” issue, he added that the “Senate [was] not going to budge.”83 In the years 1926-28 Coolidge, Kellogg, and the Senate re-affirmed the 1926 conditions, and in 1929 the agreement to Root’s negotiations at Geneva was premised upon there being no infringement of the original demand for a veto. The historiographical diptych which has Hoover cowering before a vociferous minority of antiCourt Senators and then collapsing under the impact of the Depression obscures the crucial point that Hoover’s reason for delay was his assessment that the outright opponents and qualified proponents constituted a sufficient number to block senatorial acceptance of the Root Protocol. Other evidence of likely voting behaviour confirms Hoover’s judgment. Before we discuss this evidence a number of rather different considerations need to be remembered. Indeed they are so elementary, it might appear naive to state them. Yet so much wishful thinking and embittered retrospect surrounds the Court issue that a little formal exposition is in order. To begin with basics: the new protocols were handled by the executive as a treaty. As such the executive sought an affirmative vote of two-thirds of those senators present and voting. Contemporaries and historians bemoaned this constitutional procedure, but that such a legislative requirement had to be satisfied was undeniable. Surveys and later reminders that press editorials ran in favor of the Court might be true but they were technically irrelevant. Such surveys were essentially propaganda: an argument that the Senate should vote for the protocols. They should not be construed as evidence that the Senate would have voted for the Court but then drew back for unexplained and possibly disreputable motives. Many argued that the “two-thirds rule” was archaic, but there it was. Its very stubbornness had been the precise reason for its drafting in 1787.84 There are, moreover, deeper problems behind the appeal to the press. The most obvious lies in the terms that the newspapers were ostensibly endorsing. The 1926 version? Or the new protocols? The answer is both, on the unfounded belief that the latter equaled the former. But no authoritative proponent in the administration or Senate thought that. So, at best, the appeal to the press can only be validly interpreted as an appeal for 1926 all over again—the logical conclusion that was so daunting to Hoover himself. A second, methodological problem concerns the representativeness of editorial opinion. This question is far larger than the Court issue, because it is not uncommon to find historians using editorials not as mere opinions but as objective registers of events. In the case of American adherence to the Court, the problematical nature of editorial opinion and its relationship to public opinion may be simply revealed by considering the following raw data. Though surveys suggest that the majority of (English-language) papers advocated adherence, they also show that, on average, the papers with larger circulations opposed adherence. Relatedly, these larger-circulation papers sold in the larger cities, another dent in the image of isolationism as a rural more than urban phenomenon. Additionally there is the implicit though

troublesome identification of readers’ attitudes to editorial columns. Taken together even these three considerations go a long way to exposing the methodological uncertainties that surround the citation of press opinion on specific legislation.85 What of likely senatorial behaviour? Again a few caveats are in order. Not all senators are equal: the young and new may defer to the old and experienced; conversely they may wish to establish a reputation as independents. (It may be sufficient just to mention the custom of logrolling and issue-bargaining; and simple personal friendships and antipathies played their part, we are told by lobbyists. But in the Court case we are modeling a “free-choice” environment.)86 Additionally the discipline of exact, verbal precision in legislation may push and pull voters across existing divisions, and in such circumstances particularly, more uncertain Senators may follow the recognized authorities. (The 1935 vote strikingly confirmed the latter point.) Evidently we cannot quantify such variables in the abstract, but to ignore their vitality is to lose the nuances of actual political behaviour.87 Yet with all these necessary qualifications we can give a reasonably full account of the field of forces in which Hoover operated, and the conclusion bears out the accuracy of his own interpretation. The following estimates of likely senatorial voting are based upon press reports and surveys conducted by pro-Court lobbyists from the spring of 1929 until early 1931, when the announcement of the Austro-German Customs Union and its subsequent adjudication became new bench-marks for establishing legislative intentions.88 Two preliminary points need mentioning, though they are really glosses on earlier remarks. First, so many statements by and about senators rest on the linked assumptions that either the Root Protocol was the functional equivalent of the Fifth Reservation or the Reservation itself would be explicitly re-affirmed in any future legislation. Secondly, the Committee on Foreign Relations always contained a greater proportion of potential negative votes than the Senate as a whole. The likely result of this asymmetry was that undecided or even sympathetic Senators might, when the crunch came with voting on the floor, follow the lead of less sympathetic Committee members out of deference to their experience and recognized authoritativeness. So it was again in the 1935 Senate vote. The pattern to emerge from the press and survey data shows the following trends. When the Root Protocol was first announced the Committee on Foreign Relations was almost equally divided for and against the Court, and this was on the assumption that the veto power had been preserved. By the end of 1929 the favorable majority in the Committee had increased; but it was now unmistakable that this majority either believed the veto had been preserved or intended to reaffirm it. The Senate as a whole showed the same movement, though there was still a large proportion of “don’t knows” and undeclared, a grouping large enough so that if the numbers were equally divided, a blocking-third would be constituted against any motion to approve the protocols. The overall effect of these movements was that by the end of 1929 and on into 1931 the number of favorable senators stabilized at over 50% but the outright opposition grew as a number of unclassifieds revealed their position, usually by insisting they would vote to approve if and only if the Fifth Reservation were repeated. By October 1930, that is after the primaries but before the Republicans lost effective control in the Senate, such surveys and similar evidence convinced Hoover that the protocols would be defeated (at best nullified) in the short, lame-duck Third Session of the Seventy-First

Congress, due to convene in December. As this session closed in early March 1931, lobbyists suggested calling a special session of the new Seventy-second Congress so the Senate could act on the protocols. Indeed they censured Hoover for his “lukewarmness” towards the Court. Hoover lost patience with the criticisms. On the contrary, he replied, he desired American adherence, but in the circumstances be could see no possibility of the Senate agreeing—even with the repetition of the Fifth Reservation.89 He was, undoubtedly, correct. When pressed by lobbyists to take executive action and show political leadership Hoover reasonably responded that they had their role to play.90 Hoover had a point, and it was barbed. For example, Hoover had little enough control over his own nominal supporters in the Congress, and he had even less after the 1930 mid-term elections. Naturally he had less clout with the Democrats, but the Democrats did not have an agreed line on the Court, even though they supported the existing Court more than the Republicans. (This pro-Court tendency was a legacy of the somewhat partisan split over the League.) More importantly, the pro-Court lobbyists themselves disagreed over timing and tactics. The most serious rift was between the National World Court Committee (NWCC) and the American Foundation. The NWCC, an umbrella-group set up in late 1929 to promote the Root Formula, was troubled that the American Foundation would alienate its friends and further antagonize its opponents by pressing for a special session. Almost as impatient with the American Foundation as Hoover was, Everett Colby of the NWCC spoke disparagingly of them as the “peace crowd,” who were dividing the “peace forces.” As Colby redundantly reminded Hoover, even the “World Court leaders in the Senate were themselves opposed” to bringing the protocols up for debate, most of all in a special session.91 It is well known that Hoover called no special session of the Seventy-Second Congress, which had been elected in 1930. (Thus thirteen months separated the election of the Congress from its first proceedings.) When Hoover did send the protocols to the Senate in December 1930 the Committee on Foreign Relations voted for them to “go over” until the Seventy-Second Congress convened in regular session a year later in December 1931.92 Though fiercely criticized then and afterwards, the vote saved the protocols temporarily. So far from the postponement being the work solely of the opponents, it was sponsored by the pro-Court senators.93 The Committee also decided to hear Root’s own defense of his formula; and in lengthy testimony the eighty-five year old, the senior figure in the East Coast Republican foreign-policy establishment, did his best with an impossible brief.94 Only Swanson thought Root persuasive while Stimson said plainly, gently but privately that the Root Protocol had not preserved the Fifth Reservation.95 No wonder that Assistant Secretary Castle, once an advocate of adherence, lost patience and described the whole business as monumentally unimportant.96 Departmental and legislative energies were being wasted; and the fault lay with those lobbyists and publicists who perversely argued that the League had accepted the 1926 terms unconditionally. Within weeks of Root’s testimony the Austro-German Customs Union scheme injected the drama of international politics into the more technical debate on the League’s handling of the 1926 terms. Hoover apparently kept faith with his ideal of the Court even after the damaging advisory opinion was announced in September 1931.97 But the Court’s decision further

weakened senatorial support for the protocols. It may well be that the adjudication merely confirmed existing prejudices and intensified misgivings; but if we give senators the benefit of the doubt and accept that their judgment was affected, then the evidence points to all the switches being to the opposition. When senators spoke of being influenced by the advisory opinion all agreed that the impact upon them had been unfavourable.98 (Pro-Court newspapers described the same results, but without necessarily changing their own editorial positions.)99 In private Root, Lenroot and Kellogg also acknowledged the adverse results of the advisory opinion, while in public the pro-Court lobbyists praised the League’s political handling of the issue and the Court’s judicial resolution of the legal controversy.100 In short, whatever the private and public expressions of important individuals, by winter 1931-1932 the disposition of forces in the Senate had shifted a little more against the likelihood of a two-thirds majority for the 1929 Protocols, even with the reassertion of the Fifth Reservation. Later events in the Committee confirmed this interpretation, above all the publication of a lengthy Report in June 1932 (authored by two pro-Court senators) acknowledging the “controversy” which surrounded the “ambiguous” Root Protocol.101 But this Report, like so much important detail in the Court’s history, has been neglected, a casualty of the attention focused on national politics, the party conventions, the elections, and the bitterness of the Hoover-Roosevelt Interregnum.102 CONCLUSION It is impossible to hide the anticlimax that characterized Hoover’s presidential role in the drama of the World Court. The one president of the interwar years whose commitment to adherence was genuine and well-informed proved unable to use his considerable intellectual gifts to consummate American membership. From the high point of his Inauguration, when it seemed that the League might accept the 1926 terms, the course of the protocols was downhill until they stalled in the legislative impasse of the Depression congresses. In his Memoirs Hoover wrote of the protocols becoming “bottled up.” But Hoover did not leave it there: it was “Republican isolationists,” joined by “many Democrats,” who had caused the delay.103 The language is skillfully chosen. It suggests an ad hoc bipartisan coalition of obstructionists, but we have seen that Hoover and other advocates of adherence were equally, if not more, responsible for postponing action. Senators Johnson, Moses, George Norris (Nebraska Republican), all of whom are mentioned by Hoover, and Borah (who goes unmentioned), were certainly not keen on making the protocols a legislative item; but these four Republican senators were confident that if the protocols were brought to a vote, they would be rejected or nullified, thanks to a significant number of like-minded Democrats—exactly the combination which would defeat adherence to the Court in January 1935.104 Such counter-evidence on the responsibility for delay demonstrates a wider weakness in the existing historiography of Hoover and the Court. The Root Protocol, the crux of the controversy, was vulnerable before the onset of the Depression. The crisis atmosphere of 1929-1930 and later simply limited the chances of debate on a proposal which commanded little emotional and intellectual support in the Executive and among pro-Court senators. In other words, the Depression highlighted the inadequacy of the League’s response; the

Depression did not itself invalidate or undermine that response. That particular effect was produced by the Austro-German Customs Union case. The same sources also show that the psychodynamic explanations of Hoover’s failure are both inaccurate and irrelevant. Hoover did offer leadership, managing to trace a sinuous path between the expectations of foreign diplomats, the hostility of anti-Court senators, the anxieties of pro-Court senators and the unrealistic demands of some prominent lobbyists. That he had been given such a problematical brief with the Root Protocol was not his fault; and Stimson, for all his complacent bluster, was no more able to persuade sympathetic senators than the cautious, critical Hoover. Nor was it Hoover’s fault that the Austro-German Customs Union advisory opinion fatally damaged the Court’s reputation for impartiality, the final consequences of this blow falling on the Court’s supporters during the 1935 defeat.105 Scholars who have written on the Court issue have found it difficult to gauge its true significance. In his widely respected study of the Hoover administration’s foreign policy, Robert Ferrell treats the Court question dismissively as a fatuous diversion from more serious matters.106 Accinelli’s own knowledge and immersion in the area prevent him from seeing the Court campaign so negatively; rather the campaign had a significance outside itself. In Accinelli’s formulation, the “Court proposal,” while “of modest practical value,” was of considerable symbolic import. Signifying the readiness of the United States to cooperate with other nations to promote peace and the rule of law, the proposal embodied the non-coercive, non-entangling, legally-orientated approach to world affairs which was a hallmark of the policy of limited internationalism practiced in the 1920s.107

Accinelli’s evaluation correctly characterizes much of Hoover’s approach to the question of American adherence. Hoover thought the Court worthwhile because it represented to him a means of promoting “non-coercive, non-entangling” methods of resolving inter-state conflicts. In the words of Hoover’s keynote Des Moines speech: [T]he Court relies upon the up-building of the processes of justice between nations, and upon public opinion for their enforcement. By it we enter into no obligations to use arms or take no commitment that limits our freedom of action. Its purpose lies solely in facilitating the elimination of many of the causes of war before they rise to the threat of war. The sincere devotion to this principle has been traditional with our people.”108

Where modern analysts such as Accinelli and Christol fall short, however, is in their own idealistic conception of the Court. They seem reluctant to accept that the Court served the League both jurisprudentially and politically—exactly the role that the main League powers (the Permanent Members of the Council) expected the Court to play. If Hoover’s Des Moines speech offered one vision of the Court, Robert Cecil, Hoover’s fellow-lecturer, offered another and more accurate account. The logic of the League-Court relationship led to the Austro-German Customs Union case, and this, more than anything, explains the historiographical neglect of the litigation and judgment in postwar American writing on the Court.109 When Hoover fired the “opening gun” in the Harding administration’s campaign for American adherence with the Des Moines speech, it was the anti-Leaguers, for all their bitter language, who were more aware of the true function of the Court and the real goals of the

leading pro-Courters.110 To the latter, the Court was the means of bringing the United States into the League “on the installment plan.”111 This was the true meaning of the Court campaign in the United States. Adherence to the Permanent Court of International Justice was not a “symbol”; rather it was to be the penultimate stage on the road to full American membership of the League of Nations. The struggle lost in 1920 might yet be won on different ground. If Hoover, who had once tried to win that fight directly, eventually presided over the closing moments of the indirect battle, the fault lay less with him but rather with the League-Court connection itself. No person, no president whatever his intellectual or psychological make-up, could have surmounted that brute fact.112 NOTES I should like to acknowledge the financial support of the Trustees of the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library Association, who gave me a Fellowship to work upon this project; and while at West Branch in Iowa I was assisted greatly by the friendly and expert archivists of the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library. My thanks also for financial support to the U.S. Embassy in London and the University of Sussex, my academic home for so many stimulating years. In the United States, Librarians in the following institutions aided my researches on President Hoover: the Library of Congress, Manuscript Division; the Bancroft Library of the University of California at Berkeley; the Library of the Harvard Law School; and the Sterling Memorial Library at Yale. Closer to home I have benefited from the services of the Librarians of the Squire Law Library and the University Library of the University of Cambridge, and the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies, University of London. As on many other occasions, my former colleagues in the Inter-Library Loans Division of the University of Sussex Library procured many elusive scholarly materials for this project. I also wish to record my gratitude to the members of the Lauterpacht Research Centre for International Law in the University of Cambridge, where I have been a Visiting Fellow and worked, inter alia, on revising the original manuscript of this essay. James Crawford, Whewell Professor in International Law, and the late and much missed Nicholas Sinclair-Brown in particular have been most indulgent of a historian who has tried his hand in the area of international law. Finally, and most importantly I am delighted to record here formally my thanks to the sponsors of the VI Hoover Symposium, held at George Fox University, who honoured me with an invitation to deliver the address which formed the basis for this essay. I record especially my many intellectual and personal debts to Lee Nash, Professor of History, before, during and after the VI Hoover Symposium. Michael Dunne Clare Hall University of Cambridge August 2009 1. Ellis W. Hawley, ed., Herbert Hoover as Secretary of Commerce: Studies in New Era Thought and Practice (Iowa City, 1981); Herbert Hoover, “Foreword,” in Elisha M. Friedman, ed., America and the New Era: a Symposium on Social Reconstruction (New York, 1920). 2. Melvyn Leffler, “Herbert Hoover, the ‘New Era,’ and American Foreign Policy, 1921-29,” in Hawley, Herbert Hoover as Secretary of Commerce, pp. 148-82. Leffler lists much of the important work but not his own excellent monograph, The Elusive Quest: America’s Pursuit of European Stability and French Security, 1919-1933 (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1979). For earlier historiographical reviews, see the essays in Part IV of Martin L. Fausold and George T. Mazuzan, eds., The Hoover Presidency: a Reappraisal (Albany, N.Y., 1974). 3. Carl Q. Cristol, “Herbert Hoover: the League of Nations and the World Court,” in Herbert Hoover Reassessed. Essays Commemorating the Fiftieth Anniversary of the Inauguration of our Thirty-First President. Foreword by Mark O. Hatfield. (Washington, 1981), pp. 335-79; Alexander DeConde, “Herbert Hoover and Foreign Policy: a Retrospective Assessment,” ibid. pp. 313-34, esp. p. 319; David Burner, Herbert Hoover: A Public Life (New York, 1979), pp. 138, 284. DeConde’s essay has been revised and updated in Mark M. Dodge, ed., Herbert Hoover and the Historians (West Branch, Iowa, 1989), pp. 87-116. The characterization is repeated on p. 98. DeConde was one of the first of the so-called Hoover revisionists, with his study of the antecedents FDR’s “good neighbor” policy entitled Herbert Hoover’s Latin American Policy (Stanford, Calif., 1951).

4. William Starr Myers, The Foreign Policies of Herbert Hoover, 1929-1933 (New York, 1940), pp. 4-5; Joan Hoff Wilson, American Business and Foreign Policy, 1920-1933 (Lexington, Ky., 1971), esp. pp. xxvi-xxvii and “A Reevaluation of Herbert Hoover’s Foreign Policy”: Fausola and Mazuzan, Hoover Presidency, pp. 164-86; John Whiteclay Chambers II, “Herbert Clark Hoover,” in Warren F. Kuehl, ed., Biographical Dictionary of Internationalists (Westport, Conn., 1983), pp. 349-51. 5. Joan Hoff Wilson, “Herbert Hoover Reassessed,” in Herbert Hoover Reassessed, pp. 103-19, especially p. 109. For a more recent survey, see Ellis W. Hawley, “Herbert Hoover and Modern American History: Sixty Years After,” in Dodge, Herbert Hoover and the Historians, pp. 1-38. See also Craig Lloyd, Aggressive Introvert: A Study of Herbert Hoover and Public Relations Management, 1912-1932 (Columbus, Ohio, 1972); Peri E. Arnold, “The ‘Great Engineer’ as Administrator: Herbert Hoover and Modern Bureaucracy,” Review of Politics 42 (July 1980): 329-48. For the disappointment of high presidential hopes in general, John Milton Cooper, Jr., “Great Expectations and Shadowlands: American Presidents and their Reputations in the 20th Century”, Virginia Quarterly Review LXXII (Summer 1996), pp. 377-91, esp. pp. 386-87. 6. Martin L. Fausold, The Presidency of Herbert C. Hoover (Lawrence, Kans., 1985), Chapter 9, discusses the traditional characterization. My own evaluation is based upon both the public record and the Papers of Stimson, housed in the Sterling Memorial Library at Yale. 7. John R. M. Wilson, “The Quaker and the Sword: Herbert Hoover’s Relations with the Military,” Military Affairs 38 (April 1974): 41-47. 8. The historical literature, especially the work of Denna Frank Fleming, is reviewed in Michael Dunne, “Isolationism of a Kind: Two Generations of World Court Historiography in the United States,” Journal of American Studies XXI (December 1987), pp. 327-51, which is updated by the materials in this essay. 9. Robert D. Accinelli, “The Hoover Administration and the World Court,” Peace and Change 4 (Fall 1977): 28-36; Christol, “Herbert Hoover,” cited in Note 3 above. While my interpretations often differ from Professor Accinelli’s, he has been generous to me with his scholarship. For Hoover’s “averageness” and “controversiality,” see Gary M. Maranell, “The Evaluation of Presidents: an Extension of the Schlesinger Polls,” Journal of American History 57 (June 1970): 104-113; Robert K. Murray and Tim H. Blessing, “The Presidential Performance Study: a Progress Report,” ibid. 70 (December 1983): 535-55. 10. Ray Lyman Wilbur and Arthur Mastick Hyde, The Hoover Policies (New York, 1937), p. 588. 11. This synopsis is based upon my study, The United States and the World Court, 1920-1935 (New York, 1988). The unparalleled historian of the International Court of Justice (and the earlier Permanent Court of International Justice) is Shabtai Rosenne: see his general study The World Court: What it Is and How it Works, 5th ed. rev. (Dordrecht, Boston and London, 1995). For the USA the PCIJ and the ICJ, see Michla Pomerance, The United States and the World Court as a ‘Supreme Court of the Nations ‘: Dreams, Illusions and Disillusion (The Hague and Boston, 1996); and for the work of the two courts, Shabtai Rosenne and Yael Ronen, The Law and Practice of the International Court, 1920-2005. 4th. ed., 4 vols. (Leiden and Boston, 2006), esp. I, chapter I. 12. For the “red thread”, see Dunne, United States and the World Court, p. 202; cf. Jozef L. Kunz, Die Revision der Pariser Friedensvertrage: eine volkerrechtliche Undersuchung (Vienna, 1932). For two recent and differing analyses of the Court’s jurisprudence, see Don Greig, “ ‘International Community’, ‘Interdependence’ and All that . . . Rhetorical Correctness?”, in Gerard Dreijen et al., eds., State Sovereignty, and International Governance (Oxford and New York, 2002), pp. 521-603; Ole Spiermann, International Legal Argument in the Permanent Court of International Justice and the Rise of the International Judiciary. Cambridge Studies in International and Comparative Law (Cambridge, 2005). 13. Herbert Hoover, The Memoirs of Herbert Hoover, Vol. Ill, the Great Depression, 1929-1941 (New York, 1952), p. 62. 14. Walter Lippmann, “Defeat of the World Court,” New York Herald-Tribune, February 2, 1935, p. 15. 15. Robert K. Murray, “Herbert Hoover and the Harding Cabinet,” in Hawley, Herbert Hoover as Secretary of Commerce, pp. 17-42, especially pp. 30-31. In his excellent review, ibid. pp. 148-82, Leffler omits Benjamin D. Rhodes, “Herbert Hoover and the War Debts, 1919-33,” Prologue 6 (Summer 1974): 130-44. One contemporary source for the quip about Hoover the general factotum is TRB, “Washington Notes,” New Republic (September 2, 1925): 43. 16. The Hiram Warren Johnson Papers are in the Bancroft Library of the University of California, Berkeley. The HooverJohnson relationship is discussed inter alia in the well-written biography by Richard Coke Lower, A Bloc of One: The Political Career of Hiram W. Johnson (Stanford, Calif., 1993), esp. chapter 4. Johnson was, of course, Teddy Roosevelt’s running-mate in 1912. 17. John Maynard Keynes, The Economic Consequences of the Peace (London, 1920), p. 257, note 1. 18. Burner offers some contemporary qualifications to Keynes’s judgment: Burner, Herbert Hoover, pp. 138, 379. See also the essays in Lawrence E. Gelfand, ed., Herbert Hoover: the Great War and its Aftermath, 1914-23 (Iowa City, 1979). 19. Christol, “Herbert Hoover,” surveys Hoover’s League campaign, but from a different perspective. A later account of Hoover’s League policy may be found in Clifford R. Lovin, “Herbert Hoover, Internationalist, 1919-1923,” Prologue 20 (Winter 1988): 249-67. Hoover was more troubled by the general terms of the Treaty of Versailles (especially the treatment of Germany) than by the obligations flowing from the Covenant of the League of Nations: see Royal J. Schmidt, “Hoover’s

Reflections on the Versailles Treaty,” in Gelfand, Herbert Hoover, pp. 61-86. 20. The characterization comes from Thomas A. Bailey, Woodrow Wilson and the Great Betrayal (New York, 1945), pp. 56-57. The quotations and chronology in this and the previous paragraph may be found in Christol, “Herbert Hoover,” pp. 340 ff. and Burner, Herbert Hoover, chapter 8. 21. Editorial, “A Harding World Court or a Cox League of Nations,” Current Opinion 69 (October 1920): 429-35. Ogden L. Mills to Hoover, 16 May 1923, HHPL. Elihu Root, who re-appears in this story, was the U.S. national member (but not official representative) on the 1920 League’s Advisory Committee of Jurists: see text at Note 11 above and Dunne, United States and the World Court, chapter 2. 22. Kirk H. Porter and Donald Bruce Johnson, eds., National Party Platforms, Second Edition (Urbana, 111., 1961), pp. 229-38, especially p. 231. 23. Herbert Hoover, The Memoirs of Herbert Hoover, Vol. II, The Cabinet and the Presidency, 1920-1933 (New York, 1952), chapters 3, 7. Harding’s side of the story is told at length in Randolph C. Downes, The Rise of Warren Gamaliel Harding, 1865-1920 (Columbus, Ohio, 1970), chapters 15, 19, 23. A helpful study is Gary Dean Best, The Politics of American Individualism: Herbert Hoover in Transition, 1918-1921 (Westport, Conn., 1975), especially chapter 10. 24. Bailey, Woodrow Wilson and the Great Betrayal, p. 338. 25. The debate has not altered essentially since Bailey, ibid. pp. 411-15, surveyed the literature. The classic contemporary argument for the League’s survival is Samuel Colcord, The Great Deception: Bringing into the Light the Real Meaning and Mandate of the Harding Vote as to Peace (New York, 1921). 26. William Howard Taft had not signed the Appeal; but he was generally acknowledged to have endorsed its contents. The secret drafting is recounted in my essay “William Howard Taft, Charles Evans Hughes and the Permanent Court of International Justice,” W. D. Pederson and N. W. Provizer, eds., Great Justices of the U. S. Supreme Court: Ratings and Case Studies. American University Studies: Series X. Political Science, Vol. 39 (New York and Bern, 1993), pp. 185-212. 27. Samuel Colcord, United States is to Join in the World Court. What Next? Could Re-create the Court as to Effective Power and Make it the Greatest Force in the World for the Assurance of International Justice and Peace (New York, 1922). 28. This paragraph compresses much of chapter 3 of my book, United States and the World Court, but a great deal of supporting material exists in the Commerce Papers File, Box 465, of the Hoover Papers. The Borah Papers are in the Manuscript Division, Library of Congress (cited below as LC). 29. Accinelli, “Hoover Administration,” p. 29; Christol, “Herbert Hoover,” p. 363; Edgar Eugene Robinson and Vaughn Davis Bornet, Herbert Hoover: President of the United States, Hoover Institution Publications no. 149 (Stanford, Cal.if., 1975), p. 107. 30. New York Times, February 25, 1923, pp. 1-2. 31. Hamilton Holt to Hoover, April 26, 1923, HHPL. 32. Hoover to Will H. Hays, March 30, 1923, ibid. 33. See report of W. R. Harris of Universal Service: Los Angeles Examiner, April 17, 1923, citing letter of Wilson to Representative Arthur B. Rouse, Kentucky, Chairman of the Democratic National Congressional Committee, ibid. 34. The text of the speech, delivered on April 11, 1923, is taken from that published in International Conciliation 186 (May 1923), pp. 370-79. 35. The Papers of John Bassett Moore are in the Library of Congress, Manuscript Division; the Manley O. Hudson Papers are in the Harvard Law School Archives. The latter wrote a standard text: Hudson, The Permanent Court of International Justice, 1920-1942: a Treatise (New York, 1943). 36. Cecil wrote a number of autobiographical studies: see especially [Edward Algernon] Robert Cecil, A Great Experiment: an Autobiography of Viscount Cecil (Lord Robert Cecil) (London, 1941); Cecil, All the Way: by Viscount Cecil of Chelwood (London, 1949). 37. Editorial, “Lord Cecil Seeks to Lure U.S. into Entanglement,” New York American, April 24, 1923. 38. Calvin DeArmond Davis, The United States and the First Hague Peace Conference (Ithaca, N.Y., 1962); Davis, The United States and the Second Hague Peace Conference: American Diplomacy and International Organization, 18991914 (Durham, N.C., 1976); Warren F. Kuehl, Seeking World Order: the United States and International Organization to 1920 (Nashville, Tenn., 1969). The Librarian of the International Court of Justice, Arthur Eyffinger, has produced three handsome volumes for general interest but of great scholarly depth and with broad bibliographies: see, The Peace Palace: Residence for Justice – Domicile of Learning (The Hague, 1988); The International Court of Justice, 1946-1996 (The Hague, London and Boston, 1996); and The 1899 Hague Peace Conference: “The Parliament of Man, the Federation of the World” (The Hague, London and Boston, 1999). For representative essays on the continued importance of the 1899 and 1907 gatherings, see George H. Aldrich and Christine M. Chinkin et al., “Symposium: The Hague Conferences,” American Journal of International Law 94 (January 2000), pp. 1-98. See also Geoffrey Best, “Peace Conferences and the Century of Total War: the 1899 Hague Conference and What Came After,” International Affairs 75 (July 1999): 619-34. 39. San Francisco Examiner, April 13, 1923; Washington Herald, April 13, 1923. 40. John Bassett Moore to Max Huber, March 31, 1923 and December 10, 1923: Moore Papers.

41. Burner, Herbert Hoover, pp. 138, 153; Best, Politics of American Individualism, p. 168, Lloyd, Aggressive Introvert, p. 68. 42. Rhodes, “Herbert Hoover and the War Debts,” pp. 134-36. 43. For Hoover’s post World War II “Gibraltar Strategy,” see Burner, Herbert Hoover, p. 336. In the 1920s, one British diplomat described Hoover as “an efficient calculating machine.” B.J.C. McKercher, The Second Baldwin Government and the United States, 1924-1929: Attitudes and Diplomacy (Cambridge, 1984), p. 239, note 19; cf. Rhodes, ibid. p. 144. 44. New York Globe, April 11, 1923; New York World, April 12, 1923. 45. See the many clippings from a wide variety of papers in Commerce Papers, Box 465, HHPL. 46. Editorial, “Mr. Borah’s Interpolation,” The Journal (Peoria, 111.), April 13, 1923. 47. “The World Peace Court as Political Dynamite,” Literary Digest (April 28, 1923); “The World Court Controversy,” Barron’s (April 16, 1923). 48. Huntington Gilchrist memo, “Some Reflections on the American Situation,” July 31, 1923: copy in Arthur Sweetser Papers, LC. 49. Hoover, Memoirs, II, p. 50. 50. Michael Dunne, “The Harding Administration and the World Court,” Paper delivered to the Ohio Academy of History, Columbus, April 1984. For the two crucial Harding speeches, see Speeches and Addresses of Warren G. Harding, President of the United States. Delivered during the course of his Tour from Washington, D.C., to Alaska and Return to San Francisco, June 20 to August 2, 1923. Reported and compiled by James W. Murphy (Washington, D.C., 1923), pp. 32-49, 366-86. 51. The Hoover and Hughes Papers are silent on Harding’s reversal: Charles Evans Hughes Papers, LC. 52. Christol, “Herbert Hoover,” p. 367. 53. These characterizations of Senators are drawn from Bailey, Woodrow Wilson and the Great Betrayal, especially pp. 398-400; see also Ralph A. Stone, The Irreconcilables: The Fight Against the League of Nations (Lexington, Ky., 1970). Other related studies of the Senate during and after the League debate include Robert David Johnson, The Peace Progressives and American Foreign Relations (Cambridge, Mass. and London, 1995) and H. F. Margulies, The Mild Reservationists and the League of Nations Controversy in the Senate (Columbia, Mo., 1989). 54. Hoover, Memoirs, II, p. 37. 55. The evidence is presented in Dunne, United States and the World Court, chapters 4 and 5. 56. I have elaborated this brief statement in “American Judicial Internationalism in the Twentieth Century,” Proceedings of the American Society of International Law, 1996 (December 1996): 148-55. 57. Colcord to Hoover, December 8 and 27, 1924; Esther Everett Lape to Hoover, September 2, 1925, HHPL. Esther Lape was one of the leading and most active pro-Court lobbyists and a friend and collaborator of Eleanor Roosevelt. Her papers are in the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library at Hyde Park, NY. 58. Hoover to Lenroot, January 30, 1926, HHPL. 59. William R. Castle, Jr., to Hoover, July 11, 1928: William R. Castle, Jr., Papers, HHPL. 60. Gilchrist to Lape, April 10, 1928: to Manley O. Hudson, April 10, 1928: Huntington Gilchrist Papers, LC. 61. Drummond to Sweetser January [30] 1929, cited in Sweetser to Kellogg, January 30, 1929: Records of the Department of States, Record Group 59, National Archives, Decimal File 500. C114 (Permanent Court of International Justice). There is a fine biography of Drummond: see James Barros, Office without Power: Secretary-General Sir Eric Drummond, 1919-1933 (Oxford, 1979). 62. The evidence for this and the following paragraphs is in, Dunne, United States and the World Court, especially chapter 6, which is itself based upon the League and British government records and the Papers of Root and his legal assistant, Philip Caryl Jessup, both housed in LC. Jessup, like Hudson, became a judge on the bench of the World Court, as had Charles Evans Hughes and Frank Kellogg before them. 63. See especially Philip C. Jessup, The United States and the World Court. World Peace Foundation Pamphlet, vol. 12, no. 4 (Boston, 1929). 64. New York Times, August 21, 1920, p. 1; September 16, 1920, p. 1. 65. Edwin L. James, December 11, 1929, ibid.; New York World, December 10, 1929, pp. 1-2. Eleanor Roosevelt (unlike her husband), a firm and open activist for the Court, employed the term. Roosevelt to Senator Wagner, October 30, 1929: Robert F. Wagner Papers, Lauinger Library, Georgetown University. Mrs. Roosevelt’s role in the World Court campaign is discussed in the biography by Blanche Wiesen Cook, Eleanor Roosevelt. Vol. II. 1933-1938 (New York, 1999). 66. The first two cohorts of scholars are discussed in Michael Dunne, “Isolationism of a Kind: Two Generations of World Court Historiography in the United States,” Journal of American Studies 21 (December 1987): 327-51. This essay updates that earlier account. 67. Castle to Secretary of State Stimson, May 16, 1929, NA. 500. C114. 68. Root press release, March 20, 1929, cited in Sweetser to Theodore Marriner, March 22, 1929: ibid. 69. Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States. Herbert Hoover. 1929 (Washington, D.C., 1974), p. 8. 70. See pp. 46-47 above.

71. The most sympathetic and informative study remains the 1936 book by Claudius O. Johnson, Borah of Idaho. With a new introduction by the author. (Seattle, 1967), especially chapter 21. The literature on Borah can be traced in the bibliographical survey edited by Justus D. Doenecke, the doyen of (so-called) U.S. twentieth-century isolationism: see Robert L. Beisner and Kurt W. Hanson, eds., American Foreign Relations Since 1600: a Guide to the Literature. 2nd. ed. (Santa Barbara, Calif., and Oxford, 2003), esp. chapter 17: ‘The United States, Europe, and Asia between the World Wars and the Prelude to World War II.’ Beisner’s Preface (pp. ix-xi) to this invaluable reference-tool gives its bibliographical antecedents. 72. New York Times, March 21, 1929, pp. 1, 7. 73. United States Daily, March 13, 1929, p. 1; New York Times, March 21, 1929, pp. 1-2. 74. Walsh to American Foundation (AF) January 23, 1930: cited in AF Survey, October 14, 1930: NA.500. C114 Pepper speech of March 6, 1930, text in George W. Norris Papers, LC; Lenroot to Lape, March 7, 1930: Irvine Luther Lenroot Papers, LC. See generally Herbert F. Margulies, Senator Lenroot of Wisconsin: a Political Biography (Columbia & London, 1977). 75. W. H. Beck memo, September 19, 1929: NA.500. C114. 76. Castle to Stimson, May 16, 1929: ibid. 77. The detailed evidence for this awareness of Hoover & Co. is discussed in Dunne, United States and the World Court, chapter 6. 78. The leading advocate of this approach was Salmon O. Levinson: see, e.g., his article on the Revision Protocol in the Chicago Daily News, December 16, 1929. The major biography of this campaigner remains John E. Stoner, S.O. Levinson and the Pact of Paris (Chicago, 1943). Levinson was reckoned, incorrectly, to have great influence with Borah. 79. Christol, “Herbert Hoover,” p. 372 touches on this; see also Lape to Hoover, March 22, 1930: NA. 500. C114. 80. Christian Science Monitor, December 10, 1929, p. 2; cf. New York World, December 10, 1929, pp. 1-2; Theodore C. Wallen, New York Herald-Tribune, December 10, 1929. 81. Root to William Curtis Bok, August 6, 1931: Root Papers; Hoover to Stimson, November 27, 1929, HHPL. 82. Accinelli, “Hoover Administration and the World Court,” p. 30; but Accinelli concludes his account with equal blame for “the administration’s own miscalculation and caution,” p. 32. 83. Castle to Hoover, July 11, 1928: Castle Papers. 84. I have discussed the “two-thirds” rule in “Isolationism of a Kind,” especially the arguments of Denna Frank Fleming. For another pro-Leaguer’s attacks, see George W. Wickersham, “The Senate and our Foreign Relations,” Foreign Affairs 2 (December 1923): 177-92; and see more generally Carroll H. Wooddy, “Is the Senate Unrepresentative?” Political Science Quarterly 41 (June 1926): 218-39. 85. A useful survey is Warren F. Kuehl, “Midwestern Newspapers and Isolationist Sentiment,” Diplomatic History 3 (Summer 1979): 283-306. 86. In United States and the World Court, chapters 5 and 8, I examine the 1926 and 1935 Senate votes at length. However, the point was simply made in Castle’s despairing hope for Borah’s support. See above at note 76. 87. One great value of the numerous American Foundation surveys is they discuss the voting dispositions of individual Senators. 88. These paragraphs are based on the following five surveys: the American Foundation (AF) dated May 10, 1929; November 26, 1929; and December 19, 1929, NA. 500. C114; National World Court Committee, March 2, 1931, ibid.; and the AF, March 10, 1931, HHPL. For surveys after the Customs Union advisory opinion, see Notes 97 ff. below. 89. For the charge of “lukewarmness,” see Naracissa Cox Vanderlip to Hoover, March 23, 1932; Hoover to Vanderlip, March 25, 1932, HHPL. For the earlier pressure, see Philip C. Jessup (to his uncle Senator) Frederic C. Walcott, February 24, 1931; Walcott to Hoover, February 26, 1931; Hoover to Walcott, March 2, 1931, HHPL. 90. Norman H. Davis to Hoover, December 22, 1930; Hoover to Davis, December 26, 1930, HHPL. 91. Everett Colby to Hoover, February 17, 1931; cf. Colby to Hoover, December 22, 1930 & March 4, 1931, HHPL. Divisions within the loosely termed “peace movement” and so-called pro-League “internationalists” are part of the theme of three works basically sympathetic to these campaigners: see Charles Chatfield and Robert Kleidman, The American Peace Movement: Ideals and Activism (New York, 1992), especially chapters 2-3; Charles DeBenedetti, The Peace Reform in American History (Bloomington & London, 1980); Warren F. Kuehl and Lynne K. Dunn, Keeping the Covenant: American Internationalists and the League of Nations, 1920-1939 (Kent, Ohio and London, 1997). 92. S. Y. Smith to C. M. Barnes, December 18, 1930: NA. 500. C114. 93. United States Daily, December 18, 1930, pp. 1, 3; Colby to Hoover, February 17, 1931, HHPL; Senator Kenneth McKellar (Tennessee Democrat) to J. W. Downs, December 20, 1930, copy in HHPL. 94. The New York Times and the United States Daily published long accounts in their January 22, 1931 editions. The official record of Root’s testimony was issued as U.S. Senate, World Court: Hearing before the Committee on Foreign Relations, United State Senate, Seventy-first Congress, Third Session. Relative to Protocols concerning Adherence of the United States to the Court of International Justice. January 21, 1931 (Washington, 1931). 95. Swanson, quoted in Stimson to Root, March 17, 1932, NA.500. C114. Stimson Diary, entries for March 14, 17, 30, 1931, Stimson Papers. 96. Castle on February 10, 1931, cited in Robert H. Ferrell, American Diplomacy in the Great Depression: Hoover-

Stimson Foreign Policy, 1929-1933 (New Haven, 1957), p. 32. See also Burner, Herbert Hoover, p. 404, note 10. 97. Hoover to Vanderlip, March 25, 1932, HHPL. 98. United States Daily, December 7, 1931, p. 2. 99. Editorial, “The Trouble with the World Court;” New York Herald-Tribune, September 10, 1931, p. 20; editorial, “The Divided World Court,” New York Times, September 7, 1931, p. 12. 100. Root to Kellogg, September 7, 1932: Root Papers; Lenroot to Lape, January 26, 1932: Lenroot Papers; John W. Davis, “The World Court Settles the Question,” Atlantic Monthly 149 (January 1932): 119-30. 101. New York Times, June 2, 1932, p. 22; New York Herald-Tribune, June 2, 1932, p. 8. The two senators were Walsh (Montana Democrat) and Simeon D. Fess (Ohio Republican). See U.S. Senate, Senate Report no. 758, Seventy-second Congress, First Session, Touching Certain Protocols Relating to the Permanent Court of International Justice (Washington, 1932). 102. See the paradigmatic essay by Elliot A. Rosen, “Intranationalism vs. Internationalism: The Interregnum Struggle for the Sanctity of the New Deal,” Political Science Quarterly 81 (June 1966): 274-97, elaborated in e.g. Jordan A. Schwartz, The Interregnum of Despair: Hoover, Congress, and the Depression (Urbana and London, 1970). 103. Hoover, Memoirs, II, p. 337. 104. “Interviews in Washington,” memo of Lape, February 12, 1932, HHPL. Apart from forming a minor theme in much of the “peace movement” literature cited in this essay, the opponents’ responsibility for postponement is asserted in John Whiteclay Chambers II, ed., The Eagle and the Dove: the American Peace Movement and United States Foreign Policy, 1900-1922. 2nd. ed. (Syracuse, 1991), p. lxxi. 105. See Dunne, United States and the World Court, chapters 7 & 8. 106. Ferrell, American Diplomacy in the Great Depression, pp. 31-32. Fausold, Presidency of Herbert C. Hoover, p. 277, refers to this book as “still . . . definitive.” Ferrell’s contemporaneous discussion of the League, the Peace Movement and Borah in particular is even more scathing: see Robert Ferrell, “The Peace Movement,” in Alexander DeConde, ed., Isolation and Security: Ideas and Interests in Twentieth-Century American Foreign Policy (Durham, N. C., 1957), pp. 82-106. 107. Accinelli, “Hoover Administration,” p. 28.1 have discussed the “symbol” motif in “Isolationism of a Kind.” 108. Speech of April 11, 1923, cited at note 34 above. 109. In United States and the World Court I discuss this theme at length; while “Isolationism of a Kind” summarizes the basic arguments. 110. See citations at note 43 above. A weakness of much of the writing on the interwar years, especially from those scholars sympathetic to their so-called “internationalist” subjects, is the concentration on domestic politics and the neglect of international politics. Thus the contemporaneous support for the League is discussed without any critical engagement with the policies and actions of the League itself, which effectively meant the Permanent Members of the Council. In addition to the references at Note 91 above, see e.g., Lawrence S. Wittner, “Peace Movements and Foreign Policy: the Challenge to Diplomatic Historians,” Diplomatic History 11 (Fall 1987): 355-70. 111. Sweetser to Raymond B. Fosdick et al., February 16, 1926, Sweetser Papers. The same phrase was used by the Democratic leader in the Senate League battle, Gilbert M. Hitchcock of Nebraska: New York Times, February 25, 1923, p. 1. 112. The famous cartoon of “Ding” Darling forecasting history’s final (mixed) verdict on Hoover is reprinted in Dodge, Herbert Hoover and the Historians, p. viii. For Hoover’s foreign policy ideas after his presidency, see Justus D. Doenecke, “The Anti-Interventionism of Herbert Hoover,” Journal of Libertarian Studies 8 (Summer 1987), pp. 311-40.

4

Herbert Hoover and the Struggle for European Economic Recovery in the 1920s

Robert H. Van Meter

Fashions in historical interpretation bear some resemblance to fashions in clothes in that older styles often reappear in slightly altered form. This is true of Herbert Hoover especially in the realm of foreign policy. During recent decades historians have managed to chip away at the encrusted layers of myth and distortion deposited by a half century of Democratic Party campaign rhetoric. The resulting studies have made it very difficult for anyone who cared to read the record to call Hoover either a reactionary or an isolationist—epithets long applied almost indiscriminately to all members of the Republican administrations of the 1920s, including Hoover’s. Instead, on the domestic side, there has been revealed a thoughtful energetic public official who made a sustained and even heroic effort to develop policies aimed at promoting efficiency and stability in the age of large scale machine production. He also sought to preserve the essentials of America’s nineteenth century liberal values at a time when the means of production seemed more and more to propel both the economy and the society toward large scale complex forms of organization and where, with differing motives, capital, labor and the public at large demanded increasingly statist intervention. After examining Hoover’s efforts in the domestic sphere scholars have concluded that he was an important link between the ideas and policies of Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson on the one hand and Franklin D. Roosevelt on the other. As a result labels such as “corporate liberal” or “progressive” now seem much more appropriate than “reactionary.”1 In the field of foreign policy the work of revision really started earlier. There, scholars have rediscovered the fact that successive Republican administrations in the 1920s actively promoted expansion of American trade and investment abroad. While strongly impelled by both conviction and domestic politics to avoid direct political commitments, especially in Europe, officials were prepared to engage in vigorous diplomacy, to use persuasion, and, most important, to wield a variety of economic levers to advance their objectives. As secretary of commerce in two administrations and later as president, Herbert Hoover was deeply involved in this effort. Thus, however appropriate the label “isolationist” may be for Hoover’s positions in the mid and late 1930s (and I do not want to address that question here), it seems definitely a misnomer for the years 1921-1933. “Open Door expansionist” or “independent internationalist” are labels much closer to the mark.2 For purpose of this presentation the term “independent internationalist” is perhaps most useful. It implies a degree of divergence between American policy on the one hand and the goal of a new or reconstructed international economic order on the other, a divergence which has drawn the attention of some of the recent revisionist work on the interwar years—work which seems to echo some of the old isolationist charges. Let me try to put the point more explicitly. If the United States was going to link its economic well-being to a world marketplace, these students have argued, then its leaders and indeed the country as a whole, had better be prepared to assume a substantial share of responsibility for the economic and, if need be, the political arrangements needed to structure and sustain that marketplace. Such students further have argued that it is all well and good to reject the means (i.e. U. S. membership in the League of Nations) by which President Woodrow Wilson and his followers sought to underwrite the international marketplace in favor of alternative means such as economic diplomacy. But these alternatives should have been pursued more consistently and

aggressively. Furthermore, if economic diplomacy proved ineffective, then it was incumbent on the Republican leadership to take the lead in developing other approaches which would do the job and to secure a mandate for the implementation of such approaches. In short, although knowledgeable and sophisticated in their understanding of the problems (something which many early critics were unwilling to concede), the Republican leaders, in the eyes of these students, nonetheless lacked the courage, the vision, and the inventiveness to bend American policy to the task of insuring the survival of the sort of international order which they themselves thought necessary to sustain U. S. prosperity.3 The remarks which follow will draw selectively on Hoover’s record at the Commerce Department to cast some light on the foregoing questions. I will not attempt a comprehensive survey of the entire Hoover record. Rather, after preliminary discussion aimed at introducing Hoover’s ideas and delineating the main lines of Republican policy toward Europe, I will concentrate on three closely related developments: the settlement of the British war debt (1923); the initiation of the Dawes Plan (1924); and the effort to mobilize and manage the flow of American private capital to Germany during 1924 and 1925. In varying ways, each of these developments was linked to the knotty German problem, which lay at the heart of the effort to promote European recovery. Together they reveal many of the essential elements of the Republican policy. Although the nature and extent of Hoover’s involvement in each of these developments varied, when considered together they afford an opportunity to scrutinize Hoover’s ideas more closely and to see how his ideas translated into action. I Hoover initially confronted the problem of European economic recovery as a policy issue during his wartime service as one of President Wilson’s top officials. During this period, especially at the Paris Peace Conference where he served concurrently as Director of Relief and as one of the president’s senior economic advisors, Hoover’s attitudes and assumptions on this question crystallized. A look at his writings and statements at that time make it clear that Hoover came to share important elements of what historians have come to call the Wilsonian vision of the international political economy. According to this view, a world ordered on liberal capitalist lines promised peace and prosperity for both the United States and the world at large. To achieve such an order, Wilson sought to eliminate or at least neutralize autocracy and revolutionary socialism and to encourage their replacement by liberal democratic regimes. Concurrently the foundations were to be laid for a stable, peaceful, international marketplace to which nations would have access on a non-discriminatory basis. At the heart of this vision was a belief in the potential for good in a reformed and progressively managed corporate capitalism operating in this kind of liberal international environment.4 Within the broader Wilsonian context one can pinpoint four assumptions which Hoover carried with him when he left the Peace Conference. First, he believed that morality and selfinterest both dictated that the United States should play a part in bringing about the recovery of Europe. Second, he felt that this responsibility extended not just to material assistance but

involved using American power and influence to promote political arrangements which were necessary before the material assistance could have any lasting impact. Adjustments of the German and Austrian treaties and drastic reductions in arms were high on his list of such conditions. Third, he believed that there was a role for the government, both in providing the material assistance and in moving Europe toward the necessary political and economic policies. However, that role was to some extent an indirect one. It did not extend to direct involvement in European politics, nor did it involve putting the United States government in the business of conscripting money from its citizens with which to make loans or grants to Europe. Such measures would, in Hoover’s view, dampen initiative on both sides of the Atlantic. Fourth, Hoover, like other Americans, came away from the peacemaking experience persuaded that European greed and shortsightedness were responsible for many of the continent’s problems.5 Appointed secretary of commerce by President Warren G. Harding in 1921, Hoover held that position until 1928, serving both Harding and his successor, Calvin Coolidge. The responsibilities of his department dictated that Hoover interest himself in a variety of matters affecting foreign commerce—tariffs, foreign loans, currency stabilization and foreign monopolies. Beyond this, Hoover’s extensive background in foreign economic matters, his driving ambition, and his comprehensive and closely reasoned views on political economy propelled him to take an active part in a number of major foreign policy concerns of both administrations. This was especially true of such matters as arms limitation and German reparations that bore directly on the question of European recovery. Although one can discern some differences between Hoover and his cabinet counterparts on foreign policy questions, Hoover was generally comfortable with the main lines of Republican foreign policy in the decade of the 1920s. This was certainly true on the question of European recovery where Hoover, because of his experience and his international reputation, played a significant role in shaping and articulating administration policy.6 The place then to begin a discussion of Hoover and the problem of European economic recovery is with a brief overview of policy toward Europe during the Republican era. The premise underlying America’s European policy was stated clearly by Secretary of State Charles Evans Hughes in June 1921. He observed that “the prosperity of the United States depends upon the economic settlements which may be made in Europe and the key to the future is with those who make and control these settlements.” This view, the substance of which Hoover endorsed repeatedly in public and private statements, suggests an important element of continuity with the Wilson administration. It also reflects a belief widely shared by public officials, academics, publicists, and interest group leaders, that the United States could not enjoy the kind of prosperity to which it had become accustomed if Europe remained economically prostrate. A further element implied in Hughes’ language is an assumption, which is important for understanding policy in the 1920s. Europeans, not Americans, Hughes suggested, bore the primary direct responsibility for making the necessary settlements. America, as an interested party, would be watching closely and might, on occasion, even lend a hand, but it was up to European political leaders to make the crucial decisions and to adopt the essential measures.7 Implicit in all this is the response of the Republicans to the outcome of the battle over the

Treaty of Versailles. On this question the Harding administration set the course for its successors in its decision to avoid a direct role in European politics as well as any formal association with the League of Nations. Harding’s decision to appoint to his cabinet both Hoover and Hughes, two signers of the Appeal of the 31, which had advocated conditional approval of the League Treaty, was a clear signal that the president did not intend to turn his back on the problems of Europe. Initially Harding even permitted Hoover and Hughes to canvas the Senate for support for passage of an amended version of the treaty. By early April 1921 it had become apparent that, short of a divisive legislative battle, there was no possibility of the Senate approving an amended League treaty. Consequently, the administration moved to lay the groundwork for a separate peace with Germany outside the League framework.8 This, however, did not mean that Europe was to be abandoned. Thus, in June 1921 Thomas W. Lamont of J. P. Morgan and Company, a well informed observer who strongly supported the League, sent a warning to League advocates who were preparing to attack the Republicans, “I cannot too strongly reiterate,” he wrote, that “Secretary Hughes is working strongly and effectively for European cooperation, and I believe that if we support him rather than ‘hamstring’ him, he is much more likely to bring us to the point that we all desire.”9 What then were the main elements of the Republican approach to the problem of European recovery? As a starting point, it is important to note that the recovery problem, although in many respects unchanged, appeared to American policymakers in a different light in 1921 than it had in 1919. In the weeks immediately before and after the signing of the peace treaty the specter of famine and revolution had lent urgency to American proposals on the subject and had led to much discussion of mechanisms for infusing substantial American credits to Europe on an emergency basis. By the summer of 1921, despite enormous suffering and death due to cold and malnutrition, Central and Eastern Europe had not been engulfed by revolution. Even a state like Austria, where new boundaries made its economic survival precarious, managed to cling to its existence as a nation. As a result, Republican policymakers were able to confront the problem of European recovery in an atmosphere less charged with crisis than had been true in the last years of the Wilson era. Although aware of Europe’s suffering and the need for sizeable American credits, Republican policymakers found themselves free to pursue the line laid down by the Wilson administration in September of 1919. That was to concentrate not on massive emergency measures but instead on inducing European nations to take those steps which would make them good credit risks for Americans. This, it was believed, would lead in time to increased European productivity and to full integration into the world economy.10 Such measures taken collectively were often referred to as stabilization because an important and highly visible objective was to produce stable currencies. Under this rubric was subsumed the balancing of government budgets (which, in turn, often required drastic cuts in public spending especially on arms) and enhancing the general climate of peace and political stability needed to underpin these efforts. Throughout the 1920s a major obstacle to stabilization was the whole tangled web of residual problems between France and Germany, the most visible manifestations of which were the large reparations bill levied against Germany and France’s heavy military expenditures. Coalescing in the years 1921-1925, the essential thrust of U.S. policy was to avoid direct

involvement in European politics but to use persuasion, example, and most importantly, America’s formidable economic power to induce European nations to take those steps required to effect stabilization and thereby bring recovery and prosperity. In practice this meant attaching conditions to American loans, credits, and war debt concessions. It also involved a series of more direct initiatives to promote arms limitation, and an ongoing effort to move the world to the equalization of commercial barriers. Because American loans and credits were private funds, the actual enunciation and enforcement of American conditions was often placed in the hands of prominent American businessmen and bankers who had no official position. Thus, it was possible to maintain the form and to some extent the substance of non-involvement in European politics. At the same time by close and continuing consultations with such men, top government officials were able to push their views about the adjustments desired for Europe as a quid pro quo for American money. The employment of such agents sometimes obviated the need for official U. S. representation at major European conferences but it did not preclude the use of official diplomatic channels. American views were regularly, if often privately, enunciated. Melvyn Leffler, whose study of Franco-American relations in the 1920s contains a careful and perceptive analysis of U.S. policy toward European recovery in these years, gives the name “economic diplomacy” to this general approach.11 It is within the context of the above that I wish to discuss Hoover. Because of his experience during the Paris Peace Conference, Hoover brought to Harding’s administration the most fully developed ideas on the problem of European recovery and the appropriate role for the United States. The excellent sources of economic information available to him as secretary of commerce allowed him to refine and update these ideas. The result was that Hoover’s public statements along with several comprehensive internal memoranda contain a very full exposition of American policy toward European recovery. Second, Hoover was generally comfortable with the thrust of economic diplomacy. His first hand experience with European politics and politicians left him, if not cynical, certainly skeptical about the efficacy of a political approach. He became convinced that, if politics could be laid aside, so to speak, and practical men of business allowed to handle things, the work of the world could go forward, productivity could be increased, and previously intractable political antagonisms muted. Although Hoover had supported, with reservations, United States participation in the League of Nations, he was not uncomfortable with Harding’s decision to operate outside the League. The use of unofficial emissaries from the business world collaborating closely but quietly with top government officials was, in fact, the sort of arrangement that was foreshadowed in Hoover’s proposals of 1919 for dealing with the recovery problem. Furthermore, scholars such as Mike Hogan and Ellis Hawley have argued, public-private collaboration of this sort designed to promote stability in the international sphere paralleled the efforts Hoover was making to encourage responsible business leaders to take similar action in the domestic sphere. In both cases the goal was to achieve order and stability without excessive statism, which, it was feared, would dampen individual initiative and, in the international sphere, held the threat of war.12 Third, despite Hoover’s knowledge of the European recovery problem and his active involvement in policymaking, one must be careful not to exaggerate his importance during the

Commerce Department years. My own research, which is centered on the period prior to 1925, suggests that while Hoover’s ideas and suggestions provoked thought and discussion, helped to crystallize plans, and served as goads to decision and action, the final decisions on the timing, implementation, and specifics of major initiatives were made by the secretary of state or the president. Finally, some mention must be made of Hoover and the question of arms limitation. Within the framework delineated above Hoover believed strongly that one key to economic stabilization and reconstruction was a substantial reduction in spending on armaments. From the time he first turned his attention to the recovery problem, most of his public statements and internal memoranda included some reference to the pernicious effects of arms spending and to the salutary impact reductions in such outlays would have on national budgets, currencies, productivity, and prosperity. Indeed it was tantamount to an article of faith with the secretary of commerce. In the fall of 1921, the Harding administration convened a major conference in Washington to deal with arms limitation. In part because of Secretary Hughes’ shrewd tactics, the United States succeeded in negotiating significant limitations in naval armaments among five major victors of World War I. Although the Harding administration was responding to widespread grass roots sentiment in favor of arms reductions, it was also aware that leaders of the business and financial community saw reduced arms spending by European countries as a way to promote balanced budgets, stable currencies, and an amelioration in the fluctuations in exchange rates, leading, it was hoped, to a significant increase in American exports to Europe. The effects of the depression of 1920-21 made the prospect of such exports especially attractive to American businessmen. Hoover understood the relationship between arms reduction and recovery better than anyone in the administration and, early in 1921, he took the lead in urging Harding to try to secure general reductions in arms spending. Although not represented on the American delegation to the Washington Conference nor involved directly in the negotiations, the Commerce Department helped to gather background data showing the significance of arms outlays in national budgets. More important, Hoover capitalized on the interest aroused by the conference to help educate the American public on the fundamentals of the European recovery problem. In public statements he emphasized an objective, never actually realized at the conference, of achieving reductions in spending on land armaments. He also suggested the connections between arms spending, unbalanced budgets, currency instability, and trade.13 It was during the arms limitation conference that Hoover prepared and presented to President Harding what was probably the single most comprehensive analysis of the recovery problem prepared by a high level Republican official. It examined the various interrelated facets of the problem and proposed to offer a five-year holiday on war debt interest payments coupled with substantial currency stabilization loans in return for a general fifty percent reduction in land armaments and a reparations settlement.14 It was characteristic of the dynamics of policymaking during these years that Hoover was out in front of the State Department with a comprehensive proposal for dealing with recovery. It was similarly characteristic that the State Department, sensitive to the difficulties of actual negotiation and to the positions of the interested parties, especially France, concluded that a frontal attack on the

economic problems of Europe would be unproductive at that time.15 Consequently, when a major European conference convened in Genoa, Italy in April 1922, it had no official U.S. representative and Hoover’s memorandum, although it contained ideas and approaches reflected in later negotiations, did not become the blueprint for U.S. policy. Arms limitation, however, remained an important item on Hoover’s agenda throughout the 1920s and his years as president. Fundamental differences in viewpoint between American policymakers and their French counterparts explain the failure to accomplish more in the matter of land armaments. It was the view of Hoover and American policymakers that the stabilization of European budgets and currencies, to which arms reduction and a reparations settlement could both contribute, would restore and sustain recovery. The resulting economic prosperity would then alleviate intraEuropean tensions. In particular, it would strengthen those forces inside Germany willing to live peacefully with France and thereby strengthen French security. In contrast, it was the French view that the reparations provisions—irrespective of any direct economic return— enhanced French security by giving the French leverage over the German economy. The French, therefore, thought concessions on reparations and arms reductions would diminish rather than enhance their security, and they felt that other powers should offer security commitments as the price for any such concessions on reparations or arms spending.16 The British, who shared the American perspective on the importance of European economic recovery, were willing to offer limited assurance to the French on this score as they did in the Locarno Treaty of 1925 guaranteeing France’s frontier with Germany. In contrast, American policymakers, although they came to appreciate the French view, were never willing to make firm commitments of this sort and were even wary about commitments to consult. Thus, during the deepening economic crisis of 1931 and 1932, when he desperately wanted to see drastic reductions in European armaments spending which could unleash productive forces and get the world moving toward prosperity, President Hoover was unwilling to pay for such reductions with a U.S. commitment to European security.17 What this meant was a primary reliance on the tools of economic diplomacy. II The central element of American economic diplomacy as conceived by Hoover and his Republican colleagues was the control of American loans, credits, and debt repayment schedules to achieve the objective of European economic stabilization. As Hoover noted repeatedly, he wished this control to be exercised for two broad purposes. First, he sought to ensure, insofar as possible, that America’s financial assistance was used for constructive ends. Second, he wanted to goad European nations into adopting fiscal, economic, and political policies which would make Europe a more stable, peaceful, and prosperous continent and, not coincidentally, a better market for American goods and services. United States economic power was wielded through four channels. First was the World War Foreign Debt Commission (WWFDC) which negotiated debt-refunding agreements. Second were the formal loan control procedures which stipulated that American bankers

submit to the State Department any proposals for foreign financing. Third were actions of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, which, under the leadership of Governor Benjamin Strong, initiated a series of cooperative arrangements with European central banks to assist in the stabilization of major European currencies. Finally were the activities of investment banker, J. P. Morgan, his partners, and a few other representatives of the American financial community who, because of the enormous latent power of the New York money market, were able to influence the outcome of delicate political and economic negotiations. Hoover was less connected to the latter two channels because he was not the principal point of contact between the administration and Wall Street. But the best way to get a feel for the way Republican economic diplomacy worked in practice and for Hoover’s role in the process is to take a close look at three developments during 1923, 1924 and 1925 when the British war debt was funded, an interim agreement was reached on the troublesome reparations question, and American capital began to flow to Europe in large amounts. The agreement on the 4.7 billion dollar British war debt was a key element in Republican approach to European recovery. Often lumped together with the agreements on the other war debts (which totaled, altogether, about 10 billion dollars) and cited as a prime example of American shortsightedness and insularity, the British debt settlement appears rather differently if viewed from the vantage point of the goals and constraints facing the Harding administration in 1922. The administration’s objective in the negotiations with the British was to create a creditors’ alliance which would, in the words of a top Treasury Department official, put the United States and Great Britain “on the same side of the table” in dealing with the other continental debtors.18 It was understood, of course, that concessions would have to be made to the continental states, of which France was the most important, but as Hoover noted in an internal memorandum to Secretary of the Treasury Andrew W. Mellon, “concessions . . . should be based on constructive political and economic policies on the part of the debtors which would not only build up the economic situation as a whole, but would build up their own strength and thus better assure the ultimate payment of the debt and interest.”19 Clearly such tactics would not be effective if the settlement made with England was so lenient as to encourage the French to believe that, as a matter of course, they could expect equally lenient treatment. Furthermore, at about three billion dollars, England’s claims against France were not much less than those of the United States. Consequently, if effective creditor pressure was to be brought to bear on France, it was important that both the United States and Great Britain be aligned together and that England’s creditor position be confirmed by a relatively orthodox settlement of her debt to the United States.20 The framework for settling the war debts was provided by Congress in February 1922. At that time it established the five member World War Foreign Debt Commission (later expanded to eight members) to negotiate funding agreements with representatives of the various debtor nations. Hoover, as secretary of commerce, was a member of the commission, as were the secretaries of state and treasury and two members of Congress. The act establishing the commission also spelled out the terms within which the debts must be funded—repayment of the principal within twenty-five years and rates of interest of less than four percent. Nations could not discharge their debts to the United States by substituting the bonds of other nations. Although the Harding administration would have preferred more flexibility to negotiate these

settlements, in retrospect the commission framework did not serve it badly given the administration’s assumptions.21 To bring the British delegation before the commission in a suitable frame of mind, the Harding administration devised a two-step approach. The first step was aimed at countering the pressure building up from the British and their Wall Street allies in favor of substantial reductions. This pressure reached a high point during the first week in October 1922, when the American Bankers Association, after hearing Thomas Lamont and former Chancellor of the Exchequer Reginald McKenna urge a more lenient attitude toward the war debts, adopted a resolution favoring partial cancellation.22 Hoover was assigned by the administration the role of challenging this view. In a major address in Toledo, Ohio, he countered with a tough speech emphasizing that Europe was basically sound, that in general European nations could meet their debts, and that the American taxpayer expected payment. Citing the so-called invisible items (such as tourist expenditures, immigrant remittances, the triangular trade which enabled European nations to earn dollars in tropical regions, and the potential for an all around growth in trade), Hoover challenged the allegation that European nations were not in a position to earn sufficient dollars to service their debts. Although he was willing to admit the possibility that “some of these countries . . . should be relieved of the annual payments for a few years to promote economic stability,” it was up to each nation to demonstrate this to the American taxpayer and the Congress.23A careful reading of the text of Hoover’s speech suggests a measure of flexibility on the administration’s part, but the speech in its tone and general thrust took a very hard line on the debt question—a point widely noted at the time, both in this country and in Europe. Lamont privately described the speech as “wicked in its misstatements, in its disingenuousness, in its spirit.”24 From Europe, James A. Logan, one of Hoover’s former associates in the American Relief Administration, reported that the speech’s “hard boiled” attitude had registered strongly and he observed that the speech had hurt Hoover’s reputation with many Europeans.25 If Hoover acted as the administration’s “bad cop” in dealing with the British, it is clear that Secretary Hughes played the role of the “good cop.” Furthermore, as the second step in the administration plan unfolded, there was more than a little irony in the fact that Hughes was able to enlist Thomas Lamont as his accomplice. No doubt aware that the substance of conversations with partners of the House of Morgan was usually transmitted to the firm’s London affiliate, Morgan Grenfell and Sons, and could then be expected to reach the upper echelons of the British government, Hughes called in Lamont in early October and talked at length about his plans for promoting European economic stabilization. At this meeting, Hughes emphasized that his overriding objective was to secure a reasonable settlement of the reparations question. After that, from both an economic and a political standpoint, it would become possible to come to some sort of agreement on the French debt on a capacity to pay basis. As Lamont described it, however, Hughes’ position was that the crucial precondition for moving forward with these plans was a settlement of the British debt along relatively orthodox lines. “He is manifestly anxious,” Lamont reported, “to sign up the British on the theory that when the British ‘come across’, so to speak, a lot of latent antagonism towards Great Britain will be dissipated, and public sentiment will be more

melting on the question of allied indebtedness as a whole.”26 Hughes did not back off Hoover’s hard line on the British debt but, significantly, he did signal that the United States was prepared to work with the British toward European recovery by pushing France to adopt a more reasonable settlement of German reparations. Furthermore, he suggested that the United States was willing to encourage such a settlement by making concessions on the French debt to the United States. In early 1923 the British in Hughes words, did “come across” on the war debt question. In negotiations concluded on February 1, 1923, the British undertook to repay the entire principle over a period of sixty-two years with interest payments starting at three percent but rising to 3.5 percent during the last part of the repayment period. The terms were somewhat more lenient than those stipulated by the legislation establishing the commission. It was, therefore, necessary to submit the British terms to Congress for approval. This was done and on February 28, 1923, the agreement was approved.27 Were the British terms too harsh? Certainly that was the view expressed privately by British business leaders and by their friends on Wall Street. It was a view endorsed by many contemporary observers who emphasized that the annual payments placed too great a burden on British and international liquidity. This judgment has been echoed in much subsequent scholarship that has looked back at the debt settlement through the economic wreckage of the 1930s.28 On the other hand, the British agreement, although orthodox in the sense that it made no concession on the total amount of the principal, represented a reduction estimated at 20 percent below the terms originally established by Congress—a reduction accomplished by adjustments in the interest rate and in the period of repayment. Given what was understood at the time by American officials, the settlement, although not lenient, does not seem unreasonably harsh. Examining the question in 1928, Undersecretary of the Treasury Gerard Winston noted that during the previous seven years the British had lent more money abroad than the United States. “To have more surplus capital for foreign loans than America,” Winston argued, “does not indicate that the burden of the debt is too heavy on British exchange.” In a similar vein one student who has studied British documents notes that a British Treasury official at the time admitted privately that the debt could be paid in full.29 This, of course, changed with the collapse of the international economy during 1930 and 1931. In any case, at the time the Harding administration believed an orthodox British debt settlement necessary because it placed the United States and Great Britain in a position to combine in bringing pressure to bear on France on the reparations issue. The secretary of commerce clearly recognized this linkage. In a memorandum prepared shortly after the British debt negotiations were completed, Hoover wrote that the United States, having settled with Great Britain “a state of great paying power and pacific intentions,” the United States could now move to restore stability in the continental states “of low paying power and still steeped in the methods of war.” Such an effort, as Secretary Hoover saw it, would require a “settlement of interlocked debts, reparations, and disarmament.”30 The opportunity to exert such pressure did not arrive for several months. When it did, however, the pressure came from both England and the United States, just as Hughes had suggested to Lamont that it should.

III Discussion of European recovery in the 1920s invariably came to center on the question of reparations. It was generally accepted by U.S. policymakers (and their British counterparts) that the long term recovery of Europe could be achieved only if Germany was, at work, prosperous, and integrated into the larger European economy. This, in turn, necessitated a settlement of reparations which the Germans were prepared to accept and carry out in good faith. In contrast, French officials had different priorities. Although willing to contemplate a revived and prosperous Germany, for the French any such revival must be conditioned on a firm German undertaking to shoulder the cost of rehabilitating the devastated regions of Northern France. Such an undertaking was seen as a political imperative by the French officials. Perhaps more important, it was also an essential element of French security vis a vis Germany. For a failure by Germany to cover these very substantial costs would significantly affect the future power relationships between the two countries. As of 1923, the reparations question remained, for all practical purposes, still unsettled. Unable to arrive at a satisfactory agreement at the peace conference, the signatories to the Versailles Treaty created a commission which they charged with the task of establishing a figure and a mode of payment. The result was the London Schedule agreement which came into force in May of 1921. Although ostensibly accepted by Germany, whose officials signed the agreement, in reality this was not the case. In fact, Germany made only one regular payment. Thereafter, under various guises German officials pleaded their inability to meet the payments called for by the schedule. Stephen Schuker, who has looked into the matter closely, believes the German failure reflected a lack of political will rather than basic economic and financial realities. Either way, however, the French found themselves faced with a challenge which was seen to affect their vital security interests. American policymakers believed that, in the long run, French security would be enhanced, not diminished, by a reparations settlement which laid a firm basis for German prosperity, but they could not offer anything in the way of a security commitment to allay the immediate French fears and induce them to be more flexible on reparations. As a consequence, American officials were, of necessity, forced to fashion some combination of economic carrots and sticks in their effort to break the deadlock on reparations.31 The issue came to a head dramatically in January 1923 when the French, fed up with what they saw as prevarications, delays, and obstruction on the part of Germany, “bit the bullet” and moved troops and engineers into Germany’s industrial heartland, the Ruhr. The ostensible objective was to extract reparations payments in kind. German leaders and outside observers, however, feared that the French move was the first step in the dismemberment of Germany, possibly accompanied by the fusion of the French and German iron and steel complexes. To knowledgeable observers in London and Washington such a development boded ill for Europe’s prosperity and political stability and posed a potential economic threat to both England and the United States. When the Germans responded with a widespread but costly program of passive resistance, reparations deliveries were reduced to the point where the French were netting only a modest amount above their occupation costs. With the German economy in a shambles and the French financial position in serious trouble, as evidenced by

the weakness of the franc, American and European leaders sat anxiously on the sidelines contemplating ways to resolve the crisis.32 The settlement that finally emerged was structured around the Dawes Plan and constituted a significant success for the American brand of economic diplomacy espoused by Hoover and his Republican colleagues. Two international committees of private bankers and businessmen (sometimes misleadingly lumped together and called the Dawes Committee) provided the catalyst for effecting a striking transformation in the European political and economic outlook in the mid 1920s. The two socalled expert committees were appointed by the Reparations Commission and charged with examining the German economic situation and producing recommendations on the linked questions of Germany’s capacity to make reparation payments and the knotty problem of how to effect the transfer of such payments to the recipient countries without disrupting either their own or the international economy. It was understood that the committees, once appointed, would recommend some reduction in reparation payments, which in fact occurred. And it was only within the context of the crisis produced by the Ruhr occupation that France was induced first to agree to the appointment of the two committees and subsequently to accept the substance of the key recommendations. These included a new more flexible schedule for reparation payments, a mechanism for effecting the transfer of such payments, and substantial modification in the sanctions available in case of default. In return for agreeing to fix the schedule of reparation payments at a level Germany could pay and for effectively giving up the right to intervene in case of default, France got immediate support for the franc, as well as a more assured flow of reparations payments. With the 1925 Treaty of Locarno, France was also given a security guarantee for the boundary with Germany. Within the context of these understandings, private bankers floated a large international loan to stabilize the German currency. The resulting stabilization of the mark coupled with subsequent additional private loans, mostly from the United States, sparked a dramatic turn around of the German economy. The German economic revival, and the spirit of accommodation and cooperation which brought it about, led to a series of financial and political arrangements which briefly promised a new era of peace and prosperity for troubled Europe.33 The U.S. government was closely, though unofficially, involved in all of these developments and an analysis of its role reveals much about economic diplomacy as it was conceived and practiced by Republican administrations in the 1920s. Three elements, in particular, deserve comment. First, the American appointments to the two expert committees were private citizens drawn from the top levels of the American business community and had no official position with the government. Their appointments reflected the belief that much progress could be made in dealing with intractable international affairs if political considerations could be laid aside and matters addressed on a hardheaded economic basis. Second, although the American representatives were appointed by the Reparations Commission and had no official position with the United States government, their connection was, in actuality, much closer than it appeared at first glance. To begin with, the State Department, though not officially involved in the selection process, had, in fact, been quietly consulted and had given its approval to the three Americans appointed. Each of the three men,

Owen D. Young, Chairman of the Board of General Electric Co., and Charles G. Dawes and Henry M. Robinson, leading bankers from Chicago and Los Angeles respectively, had previously held official positions under President Wilson where their work entailed responsibility for high level intergovernmental negotiations. Beyond this, Hoover, Hughes, and Coolidge briefed both Dawes and Young before they departed to join the experts who were convening in Paris. In addition, senior staff people from both the State and Commerce Departments were assigned to the American representatives to furnish data and other assistance as needed.34 The foregoing two elements tell much about the general character of American economic diplomacy in the 1920s, but a third element, the vulnerability of French finance and the means used by the United States to exploit this vulnerability, is essential for understanding fully the American contribution to the European settlement of 1924-25. It was the chronic weakness of the franc during late 1923 and early 1924 which provided the opening for resolving the Ruhr crisis and achieving a more general settlement. At the official level the deployment of America’s formidable financial power was characterized by a noteworthy moderation. American leaders, who might have chosen to demand a settlement of the French war debt, studiously avoided any such moves and instead adopted a position of patient restraint. In part this was because they understood that the antagonism resulting from premature or heavy-handed pressure might undercut the chances for later constructive intervention by the United States.35 Equally important, reports reaching the State Department in the fall of 1923 indicated that the British government, in contrast to that of the United States, was raising the reparations issue in conjunction with discussions for renewal of France’s outstanding financial obligations to England.36 Since aggregate French debts to England were almost as great as French debts to America, Hughes apparently decided that pressure from Great Britain was sufficiently potent to make the French aware of their vulnerability. Furthermore, by letting the British do the heavy work, Hughes was able to avoid useless strains on his relationship with the French and placed himself in a stronger position to broker a settlement when the time became ripe. British inquiries about French debts served to highlight the latter country’s financial vulnerability, a vulnerability exacerbated by the disappointing results of the Ruhr occupation. These British moves can be seen as an important benefit which the United States derived from the decision of the Harding administration to insist that the British settle their war debt to the United States along relatively orthodox lines. As one of Hoover’s business confidants wrote at the time of the British debt negotiations, “England and America are the two great creditor nations which gives them a stronger voice in world affairs than they would have if the obligations were cancelled.”37 It was that voice which the French heard in the fall of 1923 and to which they responded. If a degree of restraint was evident in official American communications with the French government during the crisis of 1923, it was in part because Secretary Hughes understood that American private bankers, who would have to furnish the money for Europe, could be relied on to make the appropriate representations. Indeed the Morgan partners, consulted quietly behind the scenes, not only helped to shape the report of the expert committees but were active subsequently in bringing pressure to bear on the French government to secure the

implementation of recommendations made by the committees. Like Hughes, the Morgan firm had refrained from exerting financial pressure during the Ruhr crisis of 1923, but showed no such reticence during the international conference which met in London in July 1924 to launch the Dawes Plan. In particular, on the sensitive points of withdrawal of French troops from the Ruhr and a modification of the Versailles Treaty terms covering sanctions for noncompliance, the American bankers were firm and insistent in their pressure on the French. Although occasionally the bankers found themselves out of step with the State Department’s representations, by and large the two worked in tandem, just as Hughes and Lamont had collaborated earlier in setting the stage for the British debt negotiations.38 Subsequently, in a repetition of the above tactics, American bankers with links to Germany were enlisted to help press the Germans into negotiating a treaty guaranteeing the security of the Franco-German border. The resulting Locarno Treaty of 1925 was, in effect, the political counterpart of the Dawes Plan.39 How should one assess Hoover’s contribution to the foregoing developments? It is striking that the approach followed by the United States conformed closely to ideas which Hoover had actively championed since the time of the Paris Peace Conference. Although Secretary of State Hughes was unquestionably the principal player on the American side, he was working from a script which, though not written by Hoover, adhered closely to the views of the secretary of commerce in all its main features. First, it eschewed political commitments and direct involvement in European politics and instead sought to improve both the political and economic climate by attacking economic problems through the skillful deployment of America’s financial power. Second, it selected as the key agents in this effort, those whose primary background was not in politics or diplomacy but rather in business and finance. Finally, it reflected Hoover’s view that the United States had a compelling interest in bringing about a peaceful and prosperous Europe. IV If the Anglo-American war debt settlement and the Dawes Plan can be considered solid successes for Republican economic diplomacy, the same cannot be claimed for the effort of the Coolidge administration to control the flow of American capital to Germany. In retrospect, this latter effort must be judged not only a failure, but, what is more important, a failure which had the effect of weakening the Dawes Plan. The principal mechanism for managing the flow of American capital to Germany was the set of loan control procedures put in place by the Harding administration in 1921, and with various modifications adhered to throughout the decade. Since Hoover was a staunch supporter of a loan control policy—sometimes over strong objections by other officials—and since he was closely involved in the flawed effort to manage the flow of capital to Germany, his record merits careful scrutiny. It is important to understand the assumptions which underlay the Dawes Plan and the role which American capital was expected to play in its success. As envisioned by Young and the experts, stabilization of the mark, to be effected by the Dawes loan, was expected to reverse capital flight from Germany, attract additional foreign funds, and spark an economic revival

which then would enable Germany to service not only the new loans she had received but also her reparations debt. For this last, the committee recommended a temporary schedule of payments which it believed was within Germany’s capacity to pay. It also contrived an ingenious set of procedures to deal with the so-called transfer problem. Under these arrangements, the German government each year, in addition to ongoing payments in kind, would pay marks up to the stipulated amount, into a special account. To the extent that German foreign exchange earnings permitted payments in francs, pounds, dollars or lira, these would be made to the reparations claimants. If the recipient nations, however, wanted to satisfy reparations claims which went beyond the available foreign exchange, then they had a choice of spending marks inside Germany or lending to German industrial corporations. If they did neither, then after a certain time the marks credits above a certain amount standing in their accounts would be cancelled.40 Within this framework it was understood that American bankers would play a leading role in the initial stabilization loan and that the United States would supply a substantial part of the additional foreign capital expected to flow into Germany after the value of the mark was stabilized. As Frank Costigliola has shown in his lucid dissection of the Dawes plan, the initial stabilization succeeded to the point that it triggered a veritable flood of American capital which, paradoxically, destroyed the delicate transfer mechanism which Young and his associates had designed. Although Young had seen the need for some foreign capital beyond the stabilization loan, it was understood that such additional capital would be limited and would flow into productive enterprises where it could earn the wherewithal for its own service and, at the same time, contribute directly to German economic growth. Both goals were important since the new private loans would create new claims for interest payments that would compete with reparations for Germany’s foreign exchange earnings. As matters developed, the additional foreign capital that flowed into Germany was not only much greater than had been anticipated but, to a substantial degree, went not into productive enterprises but rather into state and municipal bonds. This had three important consequences. First, the potential claims against Germany’s foreign exchange earning grew much faster than originally expected. Second, the relatively high percentage of loans which went for municipal improvements rather than into immediately productive enterprises made the future outlook for foreign exchange more tenuous. Finally, the sheer volume of these loans made it politically impossible for the transfer authorities to cite the limited availability of foreign currencies as a basis for invoking transfer controls against reparations payments. Thus for all practical purposes, the safety device against pressure for excessive reparations transfers was nullified. Once this pattern of loans and payments was established, a continuous stream of new loans was then needed to insure continued service on the reparations debt and on the previous loans. This was because only a fraction of these latter had been invested in such a way as to earn their own service charges.41 Judged against the expectations of the architects of the Dawes Plan, the record of German financing in the New York market during 1924 and 1925 reveals the hazards inherent in the sort of public-private collaboration which was central to Republican policy. In order to insure the success of the original Dawes loan to Germany ($110 million of which was floated in the United States), American officials and government agencies joined with the leaders of the

financial community in praising the work of the expert committees. With even President Coolidge urging Americans to invest in the loan, it was no surprise that the $110 million American tranche was oversubscribed. Afterwards, in the easy money climate of 1924-25, a whole series of additional loans to Germany followed as bond salesmen scrambled to respond to the newly emergent American taste for foreign securities.42 As it turned out, American investors seemed to prefer the bonds of German states and municipalities rather than those of industrial enterprises capable of earning the foreign exchange needed to service their debts. Thus, the proceeds of many issues went toward unproductive municipal improvements and this violated the principle that American capital should be directed into productive enterprises. By 1925, the problem had become highly visible and, at the end of December, the State Department could count thirty-five issues floated during the fourteen months since November 1924 for a total of $241 million, and this did not include the original Dawes loan. Of this amount, the State Department concluded that more than half had been borrowed by German states and municipalities. In brief, millions of dollars had been funneled into loans of which many were not only unproductive but were, in the words of one well placed observer, “pretty unsound.”43 This was precisely the kind of difficulty Hoover had foreseen when, as early as 1919, he had talked about the need for public oversight of private financing to insure that America’s limited capital would not be dissipated but used for productive ends.44 Consequently, one seeking to understand what can only be called a signal failure of American economic diplomacy is led to inquire more closely into Hoover’s role. This, in turn, leads to a consideration of the review process for private loans. The government’s review process for foreign loans was established in 1921 largely at Hoover’s instigation. At first, it functioned only erratically. Later, especially after March 1922, it became regularized, and bankers ordinarily submitted proposals for new foreign financing to the State Department which reviewed them, sometimes consulting with officials from the Commerce and Treasury Departments. Although the criteria varied and were not always consistently applied, it was originally intended to discourage loans to governments not recognized by the United States or loans clearly intended to cover arms purchases or budgetary deficits. For loans not falling into one of the objectionable categories, the State Department would usually reply with a standard letter stating that it had no objection to the financing, but cautioning that it disclaimed any responsibility for passing on the loan proposal from a business standpoint. Still later, other objectionable categories were designated: loans to foreign monopolies, loans to nations discriminating against American trade, and, most importantly, loans to governments or citizens of nations that had not funded their war debts with the United States. Off and on, there was also considerable pressure on the government to insist that all loan proceeds be spent in the United States but this never became policy.45 Repeatedly during discussions of loan control, Hoover emphasized the need to use the review process to make sure that American money went for productive purposes.46 Nevertheless, this criterion was never accepted as a basis for refusing loans even though concerns about German loans had, by early 1925, raised the issue in an acute form.47 Several considerations help in understanding what in retrospect appears as a serious failure in American economic diplomacy. First, from the beginning there was a concern that

public or private statements by the government calling attention to unwise loans to Germany would have a more general impact and shake investor confidence to such an extent that they would avoid sound German loans and perhaps all foreign loans. Second, by the fall of 1925, so many loans had already been floated in the United States that it was felt that warnings by the government might affect the market for these securities already floated, thus damaging the interests of earlier investors, many of whom had bought the bonds in good faith.48 Furthermore, U.S. officials were sensitive to the fact that a public pronouncement about whether a loan was productive was tantamount to undertaking to pass judgment on the loan as a business proposition, a step officials sought to avoid. Nevertheless, as of October 1925, the State Department had decided to include a long passage in its standard reply to the American bankers proposing to underwrite German loans. The passage warned of possible complications in servicing the loans and emphasizing the desirability of seeing the money used for productive purposes.49 In view of this, it is more than a little ironic that, despite their efforts not to convey such “business” judgments, American bankers repeatedly cited the State Department review process as evidence that the loans they were marketing to investors had government approval. In the words of one official, “no amount or phraseology will ever take away the conviction which they pass on to their clients that the government having approved the loan will stand behind it.”50 Finally, and most important, it early became apparent that the best place to arrest “unwise” German borrowing was not in New York or Washington, but rather in Berlin. As a consequence, the Agent General for Reparations under the Experts Plan, whose office controlled the reparations transfer process, became the principal focus of U.S. efforts. Beginning in 1925 and continuing until the office was terminated in 1930, S. Parker Gilbert, the private American citizen appointed to the post, repeatedly and forcefully warned the German authorities against excessive and imprudent borrowing on the international financial markets. Although he had no official position with the U.S. government, Gilbert communicated frequently with Washington, and his efforts were fully supported by American officials. Indeed, the language in the State Department letter to bankers who were contemplating German financing clearly reflected this coordination.51 However, Gilbert’s power was limited. He could not, on his own authority, prevent a German state, or a municipality, or for that matter the Reich government itself, from floating a loan. He could only make representations. As a consequence, notwithstanding an enviable reputation for his diligence, his judgment, and his integrity, Gilbert’s repeated warnings, both public and private, had only a limited effect. Historian Stephen Schuker who has looked carefully into the matter summarizes the record as follows: “Agent General Gilbert, acting as Washington’s proxy engaged in a protracted struggle to oblige German authorities to impose restraint on their own. Over a three year period he won a few skirmishes but lost the war.”52 And what of the reasons which lie behind the German behavior? A full explanation of this question would go well beyond the limits of this paper but two considerations stand out. First, there was, for various reasons, what is perhaps best (albeit crudely) described as a lack of political will on the part of the German authorities at many different levels. Second, and more difficult to pinpoint with precision, at least some key officials came to believe that, by piling up its private financial obligations, Germany could create a bloc of private international

creditors which would have a strong interest in eliminating the claims of the reparations regime, claims which most Germans, at all levels, saw as lacking legitimacy.53 One need not probe more deeply into these questions in order to grasp their implications for U.S. policy. Clearly any successful effort to insure that American capital reached only those projects deemed to be productive would have required that U.S. officials become deeply engaged in German internal politics. Any such engagement would in turn, have necessitated that the United States Government be able to deploy a degree of political and economic power which it did not possess and for which there was no public support. Put another way, the task was beyond the capacity of the existing tools of economic diplomacy. Hoover’s own role in the above developments remains something of a puzzle.54 He was alerted early to the danger inherent in the German borrowing and he repeatedly raised the question with State and Treasury officials urging the need for action to curb the unproductive loans. However, there is no evidence that he carried his opposition to the point of insisting that the government disapprove any proposed loans. Nor did he personally make a strong public statement on the matter despite the fact that, in late November 1925, he said that the United States Government should issue such a statement.55 Shortly thereafter, Secretary of State Frank B. Kellogg did make some sobering cautionary observations about these loans, but the words, although blunt and specific, were buried in a long speech covering the whole gamut of U.S. foreign policy and probably had limited impact.56 Two weeks after Kellogg’s speech, Hoover himself had an opportunity to call attention to the problem of German loans in a statement commenting on the economic prospects for 1926. But despite words of caution against real estate and stock market speculation, Hoover’s published remarks contained nothing specifically on the German loans. Indeed, surveying the prospect for the new year, the secretary of commerce found “the foreign field as a whole more promising than at any other time” as “one nation after another abroad gains in economic stability.”57 How does one explain Hoover’s record in this matter? Although perhaps not affording a totally satisfactory explanation, several factors offer insights. First, Hoover was particularly persistent in his efforts to get the loan proposals blocked in Germany where it could be done on the basis of better information about the expected uses of funds. As a consequence, once it became clear that Gilbert was prepared to move along these lines, Hoover was presumably glad to let the Agent General carry the ball. Furthermore, action taken in Berlin would minimize the risk that a too aggressive stance by the U.S. Government might damage the interests of those Americans who had previously invested in German bonds; or, alternatively that it would be misunderstood and so dampen the prospects for those “good” or productive loans which American officials hoped to encourage. Similar reasoning probably explains Hoover’s willingness to see the State Department take the lead in articulating the administration’s concern about German financing. Although, in late November 1925, Hoover had recommended that the government make a statement, he apparently concluded that the forceful warning which Secretary Kellogg delivered in December was sufficient. Thus Kellogg’s warning, coupled with the cautionary paragraphs included in the State Department letter sent to bankers proposing German loans, came to constitute administration policy. The year 1929 brought with it two developments which significantly affected the German economic outlook. One of these, the adoption of the Young plan for reparations, was carefully

planned and widely anticipated. The second, the collapse of the New York stock market, while foreseen by a few, caught most observers off balance, appearing on the scene like a storm; out of the blue. Although both developments occurred after Hoover had moved on from commerce secretary to become the President, some appreciation of their impact is important in assessing Hoover’s record for the earlier commerce years. The second Experts Committee on Reparations convened in Paris in February 1929 and, following four months of often contentious deliberations, on June 6, 1929, announced a new plan intended to lay out the terms of a final settlement of German reparation obligations (the earlier Dawes Plan, being understood as preliminary). Appropriately, the new plan was immediately tagged as the Young Plan, in recognition of the signal contribution made by Owen D. Young, the American citizen who, with approval by Washington, had assumed chairmanship of the international committee.58 There were four essential features of the Young Plan. First, German reparation obligations were to be reduced but spelled out definitively and with precision. Second, the Office of the Agent General was to be terminated and transfer protection drastically reduced. Third, Belgian and French troops stationed in the Rhineland were to be evacuated, thus stepping up by five years the timetable established by the Treaty of Versailles. Finally, there was, concurrently with the adoption and implementation of the above, to be a new German loan comparable to the Dawes Loan, floated in the money markets of Western Europe and the United States. The Young Plan, when it was finally adopted by Germany’s creditors in January 1930, reflected in substantial measure, the ideas of Parker Gilbert and was striking testimony to the efficacy of many months of careful lobbying at the highest levels by the Agent General. Gilbert aimed to use the record of German payments successfully made under the Dawes Plan regime in order to establish a figure that was at once manageable for Germany and acceptable to the Allied creditors. In Gilbert’s mind, some reduction in the total amounts owed by Germany was a fair price for its creditors to pay for getting assurance from Germany as to future payments and for eliminating the uncertainty which the reparations question cast over the international economy. In addition, the ending of transfer protection would, Gilbert hoped, force the German authorities to be more responsible in fiscal and budgetary matters and to take a tougher line on Germany’s foreign borrowing. It had been hoped that the adoption of the Young Plan would mark the final settlement of the vexing reparations question, but it quickly became apparent that this was not to be. Indeed, by July 1932, Germany had ceased paying reparations and was moving toward default on a substantial part of its privately held debt. There were, in fact, two formidable forces working against the Young Plan. One of these forces was economic and the second was political. The latter, the political one, was the deep seated sense shared by most Germans that allied reparations claims were illegitimate and should be resisted by any and all means. I have discussed this briefly above and will return to it shortly. First, however, some words about the economic force, i.e. the collapse of the American stock market and its consequences. Although the causes of the great depression remain very much a subject of debate, few scholars would deny the importance of the precipitous decline experienced by the New York stock market in October 1929. It was not so much that the market collapse, in and of itself, produced the protracted general downturn in the American economy. Indeed most scholars

would argue that it did not. Rather, it set in motion a train of developments which interacted to drag down both the U.S. and the world economy.59 Among those developments believed to be crucial in precipitating what, to paraphrase one scholar, can be characterized as the slide into the “abyss” many point to the collapse of the international financial system in the summer of 1931. This occurred as a consequence of major bank failures in Austria and Germany which not only threatened American banks but produced pressure on the pound sterling and forced the British to abandon the gold standard, the foundation of the international financial system.60 If one attaches importance to these developments then one is led necessarily to inquire into the condition of the German banks and more specifically to the impact on them of German foreign borrowing during the late 1920s. Within the context of the foregoing it is fair to ask again whether there were steps U.S. officials might have taken to better insure the soundness of German financial obligations after the Dawes Plan. Indeed it might be posited that the problems Hoover faced as president, when, in the summer of 1931, he struggled unsuccessfully to arrest the cascading damage occasioned by the bank failures in Vienna and Berlin, resulted from his earlier failure, as secretary of commerce, to press harder for tighter supervision of American loans to Germany. However attractive such a scenario might be for those who enjoy their history spiced with poetic justice, it is misleading in that it imputes greater agency to Hoover than he actually possessed. It is true that a large portion of foreign money (largely dollars) which flowed into Germany did not go to enterprises which could, because of increased export earnings, furnish the dollars required to service the loans. As a consequence, Germany’s aggregate foreign financial obligations increased faster than did the capacity to meet these obligations. This situation was sustained for a while by ever more long term foreign borrowing. Then, starting in 1928, there began a substitution of short term bank credits as sizeable numbers of those holding German long term bonds liquidated their position to invest in the booming New York stock market. Thus, when money began to tighten after the stock market crash, German banks with large short term dollar obligations became increasingly vulnerable—a situation which came to a head in July 1931.61 Hoover responded by calling for a one year moratorium on both war debt and reparations, while concurrently encouraging the bankers to accept a six month agreement standstill covering Germany’s private obligations. Although bold strokes within the context of the 1920s, these initiatives have been judged by scholars to have been too little and too late to avert what Thomas Lamont, at the time, characterized presciently as the “crash in Europe that will prolong our agony of business depression for years.”62 There is, however, a somewhat different perspective on Hoover’s failed efforts in 1931 and earlier. Drawing heavily on German sources, Stephen Schuker has argued persuasively that, from a purely economic and financial standpoint, even as late as July of 1931, German authorities had it within their power to put their financial house in order and restore the confidence of international investors. This was certainly the view urged by S. Parker Gilbert (by that time no longer Agent General but partner in the House of Morgan). Gilbert also continued to believe that Germany was capable of paying substantial reparations. That the Germans failed to act in this way, was, according to Schuker, further proof that the political forces already seen to be at work before 1929, became even more potent. Indeed the Nazi victories in the Reichstag

elections in September 1930 strongly reinforced the sensitivity of German politicians to the reparations issue inclining at least some to the view that the interests of private creditors could and should be mobilized to end a reparations regime widely viewed as illegitimate. In the face of such powerful and corrosive attitudes, Schuker maintains, it is idle to think that American officials, either before or after 1929, had it within their power to effect German policy outcomes through control of foreign capital.63 To repeat, the tools of economic diplomacy were simply not up to the task. V To wind up this brief review of three important episodes in the United States’ effort to promote European recovery in the late 1920s, what can one conclude about Hoover and his role? And, to refer back to the question raised at the outset of this paper, what light do these episodes shed on the general charges against the Republican leadership which are explicit in some of the best of the new revisionist scholarship? One is struck by the consistency and continuity of Hoover’s interest in the recovery problem. Encountering it initially as a senior official in the Wilson administration, Hoover continued to grapple with the problem through the Commerce Department years and it remained an important concern of his during his presidency. This continuity extends to the tactical measures used to attack the problem. Here the coincidence between the attitudes and assumptions which Hoover brought back from the Paris Peace Conference and the approach reflected by Republican policy during the 1920s is striking. Hoover was disillusioned with European politics after the conference and American policy throughout the decade emphasized noninvolvement in European politics and, instead, a reliance on economic diplomacy. This reflected Hoover’s aversion to the use of force and his belief in the constructive role which American economic power could play. Even the use of key figures from the American business community was consistent with Hoover’s belief that if political concerns could be muted or laid aside and men concerned primarily with practical economics could be given some scope to maneuver, the prosperity of the world could be moved forward and many of the political conflicts would recede in importance. Hoover shared responsibility for policy with the president and the secretaries of state and treasury, but it is not exaggerating his role to say that each of the three important initiatives of 1923, 1924, and 1925 which helped to bring the beginning of prosperity to continental Europe reflected his philosophy and bore his personal imprint to a significant degree. With the British debt settlement it is clear that Hoover helped to conceptualize the larger strategy of an AngloAmerican creditor alliance with the potential for inducing the French to be more tractable regarding German reparations. Also, Hoover’s tough public stance combined neatly with Hughes’ privately signaled willingness to cooperate with Great Britain on the reparations question in order to bring the British to the table in the frame of mind to fund their debt on generally orthodox lines. On reparations, it is clear that the composition and modus operandi of the committees of experts conformed closely to Hoover’s ideas. Although the secretary of commerce was not the

one who made the initial selections of Dawes, Young, and Robinson, the idea of well informed men of business examining the German capacity to pay on its economic merits, without the complicating and ofttimes irrational pressures of politics, closely reflected the views Hoover had distilled from his experience managing the coal, railroads, and relief supplies of Central Europe in 1919. To be sure, the initial success of Dawes and Young was due in part to the fact that they were quietly sensitive to political considerations. But this does not negate the point that much of their effectiveness stemmed from the public perception of them as detached from the pressures and antagonisms that affected European politics, a perception that was largely correct. In setting the stage for the Dawes Plan and in following up on the recommendations, the American financial community played a key role. Led by the House of Morgan, American bankers worked against the backdrop of the crisis of the franc in order to shape the character of the experts’ reports and to secure the subsequent implementation of the Dawes Plan. This revealed that American financial power, when wielded by the right men at the right time, with appropriate and timely diplomatic support, could be effective in attacking the intractable obstacles to European recovery, a conclusion that confirmed the validity of the recommendations which Hoover had made as early as 1919 on the efficacy of American financial power. If Hoover can take some credit for the tactics which led to the Dawes plan and its implementation, in fairness he must share some responsibility for the failure of private American capital to effect the hoped for transformation of German’s economic, and, by extension, her political life. In retrospect, it seems clear that this objective was not within the power of American authorities—working either through the loan control process or the Agent General. But since Hoover had championed this facet of economic diplomacy, he must share responsibility for injecting a seriously flawed assumption into U.S. policy making councils. This brings us back to the question with which I launched this inquiry—what light do these findings shed on the charges that Hoover and other American policy makers in the Republican era were not sufficiently daring, imaginative, or willing to make sacrifices in their efforts to underwrite the restructured international order that they believed important to sustain the prosperity of the United States? To be sure, I have reviewed only a small part of the record and any judgments rendered must be qualified. Nevertheless, it seems possible to offer some tentative thoughts about the efficacy of economic diplomacy and the quality of stewardship provided by Herbert Hoover and his associates. First, having lived through an age when the United States government used awesome financial power and military forces (overt and covert) to achieve essentially the same end (i.e. the reconstruction of Europe along lines acceptable to the United States), one must be impressed at the skill and shrewdness with which Hoover and his colleagues wielded U.S. power within the limits imposed by their own outlook and by the realities of domestic politics. Although other factors were at work to make possible the acceptance and implementation of the Dawes Plan, Hoover, Hughes, and their colleagues used persuasion, diplomacy, and good timing to extract substantial benefit from America’s financial power and the country’s reputation for disinterestedness. Second, the experience with the German loans clearly lends support to the critics of

economic diplomacy. Although a hypothetical case can be advanced that more foresight, quicker and more energetic responses, together with better coordination between the United States Government, the Transfer Committee, and the German authorities might have made it possible to control the flow of private American capital and credit into Germany, a more compelling perspective suggests that the flaw in the loan control policy did not lie simply in its mechanics but was more deep-seated. The whole approach was based on the assumption that political forces, even such formidable ones as existed in France and Germany, could be tamed by a skillful use of economic power. This, it turned out, was not the case. As a consequence, the choice facing Hoover and the Republicans was either to scale back the goals of their policy or to accept political responsibilities and devise new and more statist machinery for conscripting and distributing American capital abroad. As to the latter, it was clearly a road which Hoover repeatedly refused to take, believing as he did that it led to inefficiency, to the destruction of individual initiative, and in its international implications, to war. Much the same can be said regarding the criticism that political and security commitments to other nations were essential to the reconstruction of Europe and of the international marketplace. Although Hoover did not confront this question directly until 1931, when he faced it in both Europe and Asia, his answer was clear. An order based on security commitments and force had existed before 1914 and it had led to an immensely destructive war and a wave of revolutions, both of which threatened the foundations of production and civilization. Therefore, in Hoover’s mind, it was simply contradictory to introduce force and alliances to underwrite an international order which was designed to exist without such props. This was, in the words of historian Robert Freeman Smith, to be a “law bound” world. Faced with the choice of introducing force or foregoing the benefits offered by access to the international marketplace, Hoover was prepared to opt for the latter and fall back on the rich human and material resources of the United States of America. Hoover never actually made that choice. To the end of his presidency he continued to look for means consistent with his outlook to hold together an international economic system rapidly coming apart. However, a comment he made in the late 1930s suggests clearly what his decision would probably have been. “We can never herd the world into paths of righteousness with the dogs of war.” Hoover said in 1938.64 That statement can at once stand as a commentary on the era of economic diplomacy and as a challenge to those American political leaders of the post World War II years who have consistently taken the contrary view. NOTES The author thanks Don Roper, Hans Schmidt, and Robert Hannigan for their comments on drafts of this paper. Over many years, the dedicated staff of the Skidmore College Library—especially those in circulation, periodicals, and inter-library loans— have been unfailingly supportive and helpful. Their assistance is deeply appreciated. 1. William Appleman Williams, The Contours of American History (New York, 1961), pp. 425-38, and his “What this Country Needs,” New York Review of Books, November 5, 1970, pp. 7-11; Martin L. Fausold and George Mazuzan (eds.), The Hoover Presidency: A Reappraisal (Albany, N.Y., 1974) pp. 3-25; Joan Hoff Wilson, Herbert Hoover: Forgotten Progressive (Boston, 1975); Ellis W. Hawley (ed.) Herbert Hoover as Secretary of Commerce (Iowa City, 1981). For a fine older study which anticipated some of these ideas see Richard Hofstadter, “Herbert Hoover and the Crisis of American

Individualism” in The American Political Tradition, (New York, 1948), pp. 283-314. 2. William Appleman Williams, “The Legend of Isolationism in the 1920s,” Science and Society 17 (Winter, 1954): 1-20, and The Tragedy of American Diplomacy, 2nd edition (New York, 1962) pp. 104-159; Robert F. Smith, “American Foreign Relations, 1920-1942,” in Barton J. Bernstein (ed.), Towards a New Past; Dissenting Essays in American History. (New York, 1968) pp. 232-62 and “Republican Policy and the Pax Americana 1921-1932,” in William Appleman Williams (ed.), From Colony to Empire (New York, 1972), pp. 253-92; Carl Parrini, Heir to Empire (Pittsburgh, 1969); Joan Hoff Wilson, American Business and Foreign Policy 1920-1933 (Lexington, Ky., 1971). The term “independent internationalism” is introduced by Wilson on p. xiv of the work cited above. 3. Smith, “Republican Policy and the Pax Americana,” pp. 254-55, 292; Melvyn P. Leffler, “Herbert Hoover, the ‘New Era’ and American Foreign Policy, 1921-1929” in Hawley (ed.), Hoover as Secretary of Commerce, pp. 148-79; Frank Costigliola, “The United States and the Reconstruction of Germany in the 1920s,” Business History Review vol. 50 No. 4 (Winter, 1976): 477-502; Melvyn P. Leffler, The Elusive Quest: America’s Pursuit of European Stability and French Security, 1919-1933 (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1979). 4. On Wilson, see William Diamond, The Economic Thought of Woodrow Wilson (Baltimore, 1943); Martin J. Sklar, “Woodrow Wilson and the Political Economy of Modern United States Liberalism,” Studies on the Left, vol. 1 Number 3 (1960): 17-47; N. Gordon Levin, Woodrow Wilson and World Politics (New York, 1968). On the links between Hoover and Wilson, see Williams, “The Legend of Isolationism”; Herbert Hoover, The Ordeal of Woodrow Wilson (New York, 1958); Robert H. Van Meter, Jr., “Herbert Hoover and the Economic Reconstruction of Europe, 1918-1921,” in Lawrence Gelfand (ed.), Herbert Hoover. The Great War and its Aftermath, 1914-1923 (Iowa City, 1979), pp. 143-81. 5. Hoover, Ordeal of Woodrow Wilson, especially pp. v-ix, 253-64, 282-83, 291-303; Hoover press release, New York Times, June 10, 1919, p. 14; Herbert Hoover, “Memorandum by the Director General of Relief on the Economic Situation of Europe,” July 3, 1919. U.S. Department of State, Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States (Paris Peace Conference, 1919), 13 volumes, (Washington D. C., 1942-1947), X, pp. 462-69. This series cited hereafter as FRUS; Van Meter, “Hoover and Economic Reconstruction,” pp. 161-71. 6. Leffler, “Herbert Hoover, the ‘New Era’ and Republican Foreign Policy,” p. 155. 7. Quotation from Hughes’ Commencement Address at Brown University, June 15, 1921, Commercial and Financial Chronicle, June 18, 1921, p. 2598. See also Hughes to George Harvey, May 11, 1921, FRUS (1921) I pp. 14-15. On Hoover, see Commercial and Financial Chronicle, January 29, 1921, pp. 421-22 and items cited in Note 5 above. 8. The Appeal of the 31 can be found in the New York Times, October 15, 1920, pp. 1-2. See also Frank Brandegee to Harding, December 28, 1920 and Harding to Bandegee, December 30, 1920, Warren G. Harding Papers, Ohio Historical Society, Columbus Ohio, Box 362, Folder 25731; Gary Dean Best, The Politics of American Individualism (Westport, Conn., 1975), pp. 136-42; Merlo Pusey, Charles Evans Hughes 2 vols. (New York, 1951) vol. 2, pp. 431-39; Herbert Hoover, The Memoirs of Herbert Hoover, vol. II, The Cabinet and the Presidency 1920-1933, (New York, 1952), pp. 10-13, 36, 37. See also Hoover to Hughes, April 5, 1921 and April 6, 1921, Herbert Hoover Commerce Department Papers File. State Department, Hughes, Herbert Hoover Presidential Library, West Branch, Iowa, (hereafter cited as HHPL). 9. Lamont to Jean Monnet, June 23, 1921, Thomas W. Lamont Papers, Baker Library Historical Collections, Harvard Business School, File 107-27. 10. This shifting attitude was nicely captured by New York banker Benjamin Strong who wrote, “Some way or other the world does rock along, people get fed and clothed, governments do not fall and disappear, Bolshevism does not extend, and by and large the net is improvement rather than retrogression.” Strong to Norman, July 18, 1922, Benjamin Strong Papers, The Federal Reserve Bank of New York. This shift is discussed from a somewhat different perspective in Robert H. Van Meter Jr., “The Washington Conference at 1921-1922: A New Look,” Pacific Historical Review, 46 (1977): 603-624. 11. Leffler, Elusive Quest, pp. 40-81; For a somewhat different perspective, see Wilson, American Business and Foreign Policy, pp. 122-56. 12. Leffler, “Herbert Hoover, the ‘New Era’ and American Foreign Policy,” pp. 149-51; Ellis W. Hawley, “Herbert Hoover, the Commerce Secretariat, and the Vision of an ‘Associative State,’ 1921-1928,” Journal of American History, 61, (1974): 116-40; Michael Hogan, Informal Entente: The Private Structure of Cooperation in Anglo-American Diplomacy, 19181925 (Columbia, Mo., 1977), especially pp. 1-12 and 57-77. 13. New York Times, December 11, 1921, p. 17 and December 26, 1921, p. 28. On Hoover, the arms question and the Washington Conference, see Van Meter, “Washington Conference.” pp. 612-18. 14. Hoover to Harding, January 4, 1922, Harding Papers Box 5, Folder 3-2; Hoover to Harding, January 23, 1922, Hoover Papers, Commerce, File: Hughes, HHPL. 15. Hughes to Italian Ambassador (Ricci), March 8, 1922, FRUS (1922) I, pp. 392-94; New York Times, March 7, 1922, p. 3 and March 10, 1922, pp. 1-2. Arthur Pound and Samuel T. Moore (eds.), They Told Barron (New York, 1930) pp. 245-46. For an earlier episode in which Hoover was out front of State, see Hughes to Hoover, September 1, 1921, Decimal File 800.51/312, Records of the Department of State, Record Group 59, National Archives, hereafter cited as RG 59. 16. Hoover to Harding, January 4, 1922, Harding Papers Box 5, Folder 3-2; Hoover to Harding, February 4, 1923, Hoover Papers, Commerce, File: Hughes, HHPL; Leffler, Elusive Quest, pp. 79-83.

17. Leffler, Elusive Quest, pp. 277-87. 18. Lamont to E. W. Grenfell, September 27, 1922, Lamont Papers File: 111-14, Morgan Grenfell; New York Times, August 25, 1922, p. 15. 19. Hoover to Mellon, January 6, 1923, Hoover Papers, Commerce, File: Foreign Debts, WWFDC, HHPL. 20. Harold G. Moulton and Leo Pasvolsky, War Debts and World Prosperity (Washington D. C., 1932), p. 116. 21. Combined Annual Reports of the World War Foreign Debt Commission For Fiscal Years 1922, 1923, 1924, 1925, 1926 (Washington D.C., 1927), pp. 6-13. 22. New York Times, October 4, 1922, p. 6; October 5, 1922, p. 8; October 6, 1922, pp. 1, 8; Lamont to E. W. Grenfell, November 16, 1922, Lamont Papers, File 111-15, Morgan Grenfell. 23. New York Times, October 17, 1922, pp. 1, 14; Harding to Fred Starek, November 2, 1922, Harding Papers, Box 88, 57-A loose. 24. Lamont to E. W. Grenfell, October 19, 1922, Lamont Papers, File: 111-14, Morgan Grenfell. 25. James A. Logan to Christian Herter, December 1, 1922, James A. Logan Papers, Box 4, “Secret Letters”; Hoover Institution of War, Peace and Revolution, Stanford University, Palo Alto, California. 26. Quotation from Lamont to J. P. Morgan, October 6, 1922, Lamont Papers, File: 108-13, Morgan, J. P. See also Lamont to Grenfell, October 9, 1922 and October 19, 1922, Lamont Papers, File: 111-14, Morgan Grenfell. 27. Moulton and Pasvolsky, War Debts, p. 84. 28. Moulton and Pasvolsky, War Debts, p. 101; Walter Tower to Julius Klein, January 30, 1923, Record Group 151, National Archives, Records of the Bureau of Foreign and Domestic Commerce, File 640, Foreign Loans. (Hereafter cited as RG 151); R. C. Leffingwell to S. Parker Gilbert, February 8, 1923, Record Group 39, National Archives Records of the Treasury Bureau of Accounts (Country Files); GB 132.9/23-1, Box 113 (Hereafter cited as RG 39); Leffingwell to Gilbert, August 22, 1923, RG 39 (Country Files) GB 132.02, Comments, Inquiries and Suggestions, Nov. 1917-Dec. 1923, Box 117. 29. Gerard Winston, “American War Debt Policy,” June 1928, RG 39, (Country Files) File: France—Refunding, Box 220; Stephen Schuker, The End of French Predominance in Europe, (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1976), pp. 11, 156. 30. Hoover, Memorandum, February 4, 1923, Hoover Papers, Commerce File: Hughes, HHPL. 31. On reparations, see Schuker, End of French Predominance pp. 3-28. One arrangement which was sometimes suggested and which American leaders consistently and adamantly resisted was a straight swap of debts for reparations—i.e. that the United States would permit its Allied debtors to turn over all or part of their claims against Germany in order to clear their debts to the United States. Since the United States had vigorously opposed the heavy reparations claims against Germany at the Peace Conference and not exacted territorial concessions, American leaders did not intend in the words of Henry Stimson “to assume a position in which we would be regarded by Germany as the nation which was squeezing her for reparations, which as a matter of fact we had never asked.” Such an arrangement would also make the United States the one great creditor state aligned against Germany and the rest of Europe. Equally objectionable were the proposals sometimes discussed under which the British or another debtor would turn over claims against a third country in order to clear their debt to the United States. In practice such proposals usually called for the United States to surrender claims against a strong credit risk and accept instead claims against a financially weaker state. Diary of Henry L. Stimson, June 11, 1931. Microfilm Reel 3, v. 16, pp. 145-52. The manuscript of Stimson’s Diary is in the Sterling Library, Yale University. 32. Costigliola, “United States and the Reconstruction of Germany,” pp. 481-83; Schuker, End of French Predominance, p. 28; Leffler, Elusive Quest, pp. 82-90. 33. Costigliola, “United States and the Reconstruction of Germany,” pp. 485-94; Leffler, Elusive Quest, pp. 90-120. 34. Hoover Memorandum of Conversation with Hughes and Mellon, November 5, 1923, quoted in Hoover, Memoirs, II, pp. 181-82; Costigliola, “United States and the Reconstruction of Germany,” pp. 485-86; Leffler, Elusive Quest, pp. 90-92. 35. Spencer Phenix to A. N. Young, December 28, 1923, RG 59 800.51W89/61; Secretary Hughes’ reaction to the deepening economic crisis produced by the Ruhr occupation can be followed in FRUS (1923) II, pp. 66-110. See for example Hughes to Fletcher, August 17, 1923, FRUS (1923), II pp. 66-68; Hughes, Aide Memoir to British Charge (Chilton), October 15, 1923, Ibid., pp. 70-73; and Hughes to Whitehouse, October 24, 1923, Ibid., pp. 79-83. Costigliola, “United States and the Reconstruction of Germany,” pp. 483-84; Leffler, Elusive Quest, pp. 83-85; Schuker, End of French Predominance, pp. 33, 108-15, 141-55. 36. Post Wheeler to Hughes, July 5, 1923, RG 59, 800.5lW89/Great Britain/133; Post Wheeler to Hughes, September 28, 1923 RG 39 (Country Files) GB133/19-1, Box 121; Hogan, Informal Entente, p. 67; Schuker, End of French Predominance, p. 98. 37. Alexander Legge to Hoover, January 2, 1923, Hoover Papers, Commerce, 1-J36, HHPL. 38. See for example Gerard Swope to Owen D. Young, February 29, 1924, and March 22, 1924, Owen D. Young Papers, File: Morgan Box R-8. The Young papers, formerly in possession of the family, are currently located at St. Lawrence University, Canton, New York. J. P. Morgan, Dwight Morrow and Russell Leffingwell to Lamont, July 19, 1924, Lamont Papers, File 176-16; Schuker, End of French Predominance, pp. 108-15, 141-55; Leffler, Elusive Quest, pp. 100-12. 39. Morrow to Lamont, July 11, 1925, and Lamont to Morrow, July 16, 1925, Lamont Papers, File: 113-14, Morrow. 40. There is a good description of this in “Questions and Answers, Stone and Webster Dinner Boston, June 25, 1925 by

Owen D. Young,” Young Papers, Box R-15; Costigliola, “United States and the Reconstruction of Germany,” pp. 488-90. 41. Costigliola, “United States and the Reconstruction of Germany,” pp. 494-97. 42. Alan Goldsmith to L. P. Ayres, August 19, 1924, Leonard P. Ayres Papers, Library of Congress, Box 4. Costigliola, “United States and the Reconstruction of Germany,” pp. 494-95. 43. Quotation from Memorandum of conversation between S. Parker Gilbert and William R. Castle held January 4, 1926. Memo dated January 5, 1926, 862.51/2174; Memorandum of American Loans to Germany, February 4, 1926, 862.51/2178; Kellogg to Schurman, February 8, 1926, 862.51/2143, all in RG 59. 44. See especially Hoover memorandum of July 3, 1919 cited in note 5 above. 45. Herbert Feis, Diplomacy of the Dollar 1914-1932 (New York, 1966), pp. 18-38; Parrini, Heir to Empire, pp. 172-211. 46. Hoover memorandum to Hughes, April 29, 1922, RG 59 800.51/316; Hoover to Hughes, June 12, 1922, RG 151, File 640 —Czechoslovakia; Hoover to Hughes, November 20, 1924, RG 59 800.51/499; Parrini, Heir to Empire, pp. 195, 200, 207-11. 47. Hoover to Eliot Wadsworth, February 4, 1925, and Gerard Winston to Hoover, February 14, 1925, RG 39 (Country Files) Germany 743.2/25.1, German Foreign Loans, Box 85; Hoover to Kellogg, April 18, 1925, RG 59 862.51/1925. 48. A. N. Young to Kellogg, August 7, 1925, RG 59 862.51/2045. See also items cited in note 47 above. 49. Kellog to Schurman, October 17, 1925, FRUS (1925), II pp. 177-178. 50. J. T. Marriner to William R. Castle, June 21, 1927 with note by Castle, 800.51/566; W. R. Castle Memorandum of conversation with S. P. Gilbert, January 5, 1926, 862.51/2174. Both in RG59. 51. Hoover to Kellogg, April 18, 1925, 862.51/1925; Ralph W. S. Hill to Kellogg, August 12, 1925, 862.51/2007; Hoover to Kellogg, September 8, 1925, 862.51/2021; A. N. Young to Kellogg, September 15, 1925, 862.51/2034; “Foreign Loans— Supplementary Memorandum,” November 3, 1925, 862.51/2095 1/2, and A. N. Young “Memorandum on German Loans,” November 20, 1925, 862.51/2143, all in RG59. Exchanges between Gilbert and Washington during October and November 1925 can be followed in FRUS (1925) II, pp. 172-187; see also W. R. Castle to Hornblower, Miller, and Garrison, January 23, 1928, FRUS (1928) II pp. 900-901; and Schuker, American “Reparations” pp. 38-40. 52. Schuker, American “Reparations”, pp. 38-46, quotation on p. 40; Feis, Diplomacy of the Dollar, pp. 39-46. 53. Schuker, American “Reparations”, pp. 35-64. 54. The discussion of Hoover’s role which follows is based on evidence in notes 46-50 above plus the following: Hoover to Henry M. Robinson, October 12, 1925 (telegram). Hoover Papers Commerce File: I-J/58 Reparations, HHPL; Winston to Kellogg, October 15, 1925, 862.51/2139; C. E. Herring to Commerce Department, October 19, 1925, 862.51/2065; C. E. Herring to Commerce Department, October 22, 1925, 862.51/2077; “German Financing in the United States,” enclosed in Mellon to Kellogg, November 7, 1925, 862.51/2104, all in RG 59. I have also benefited especially from two perceptive analyses: Carl Parrini “Herbert Hoover and International Economics” in Gelfand (ed.) Hoover: Great War, especially pp. 193-200, 204206 and Leffler, “Herbert Hoover the ‘New Era’ and American Foreign Policy” pp. 165-71. See also Castigliola, “United States and the Reconstruction of Germany,” p. 486 and Lefler, Elusive Quest, pp. 173-77. 55. A. N. Young, Memorandum on German Loans, November 20, 1925, RG 59 862.51/2143. 56. New York Times, December 15, 1925, pp. 1, 10. 57. New York Times, December 31, 1925, p. 4. 58. This discussion of the Young Plan is based on Stephen V. O. Clarke, Central Bank Cooperation: 1924-1931 (New York, 1967), pp. 145-147; Stephen Schuker, “American Foreign Policy and the Young Plan, 1929” in Gustav Schmidt (ed.) Konstellationen Internataionalaer Politik, 1924-1932 (Bochum, 1983), pp. 122-130; Schuker, American “Reparations”, pp. 43-75; and Stephen Schuker, “The Gold Exchange Standard: A Reinterpretation: in Marc Flandreau, Carl Ludwid Holtfreich, and Harold James (eds.) International Financial History in the Twentieth Century (New York, 2003), p. 88-91; Castigliola, “The United States and the Reconstruction of Germany”, pp. 498-500; and Leffler, Elusive Quest, pp. 182-187. 59. Charles P. Kindleberger, The World Depression 1929-1939 (Revised and enlarged edition, Berkeley, Calif., 1986), pp. 113, 94-123, 288-291; John Kenneth Galbraith, The Great Crash 1929, with a new introduction by the author (Boston, 1988), pp. 168-188. 60. Kindleberger, World in Depression, pp. 142-167. 61. The timing and pace of these developments remains a subject of disagreement. See Clarke, Central Bank Cooperation, pp. 144-150, 171-183; and Schuker, American “Reparations”, pp. 43-46. 62. Kindleberger, World in Depression, pp. 148-167; and Leffler, Elusive Quest, pp. 231-256. Quotation from Memorandum by T. W. Lamont of telephone conversation with President Hoover, June 5, 1931, Lamont Papers, File 98-18. 63. Schuker, American “Reparations”, pp. 47-64. On Gilbert’s views see Gilbert Memorandum, July 21, 1931 and Gilbert to Ogden Mills, October 28, 1931, both in Ogden Mills Papers, Library of Congress, box 9. 64. Robert F. Smith “Republican Policy and the Pax Americana” pp. 257-60; Quotation on p. 292.

5

Nonintervention, Nonrecognition, and Food: Herbert Hoover’s Russian Policy, 1917-1925

Benjamin D. Rhodes

In his varied roles as mining engineer, humanitarian, and anti-Communist, Herbert Hoover spent a substantial portion of his life thinking about the problems posed by the Russian Revolution. Eventually, as an elder statesman, Hoover became a symbol of uncompromising opposition to Communism. However, when the Bolsheviks seized power in 1917, Hoover was only forty-three years old, and his opinions had not yet hardened. To a great extent his early views about Soviet Russia were shaped by a genuine humanitarian impulse. (Contrary to an incredible allegation later advanced by his detractors, Hoover did not demand the restoration of mining concessions from Lenin before he would provide food to starving Russians).1 Hoover’s approach to Russia was also influenced by the example of Woodrow Wilson, whom Hoover greatly admired. Basically, his policy of non-intervention, non-recognition, and food was a variation of Wilson’s “watchful waiting.” Hoover would have been quite surprised to learn, as one modern authority contends, that his policy of feeding Russian famine victims was designed as a sophisticated scheme for subverting bolshevism.2 He was not adverse to demonstrating the contrast between western prosperity and Soviet poverty, but he had no grand strategy for overthrowing Communism. Actually, for the times, Hoover was fairly open-minded and moderate in his views about the Soviet Union. If a label is necessary, Hoover could be described as a moderate anti-Communist during the years 1917-1925. In November 1917 when the Bolsheviks easily overthrew the pro-western Provisional Government, Herbert Hoover was serving in Washington as Food Administrator. But Hoover was not a stranger to Russia. As a mining engineer and financier he had made several trips to Siberia and the region of the Ural Mountains just prior to World War I. His prize accomplishment was serving as both an “industrial doctor” and a “financial doctor” for the rejuvenation of the copper mines at the Kyshtim estate near Ekaterinburg, a city today remembered as the site where the Bolsheviks murdered the tsar and his family in 1918.3 In his memoirs Hoover makes it clear that he was no admirer of the tsar’s autocracy. He was familiar with George Kennan’s Siberia and the Exile System (1891), a brilliant expose of inhuman treatment of political exiles. After observing at a railroad station a long line of chained prisoners bound for Siberia, Hoover found himself plagued by recurrent nightmares. His experiences left him with the general impression that “someday the country would blow up.”4 But not even Hoover could have been prepared for the bewildering upheavals of 1917. First, in March (by the western calendar) the monarchy collapsed, a development which took even the Bolsheviks completely by surprise. Then in November the revolution entered a more radical phase as the Bolsheviks seized power and called for peace without annexations and without indemnities. By early 1918 the Russian chaos deepened as the Bolsheviks dispersed the Constituent Assembly, a semi-representative body elected under the Provisional Government. Lenin and Trotsky then opened formal peace talks with the Germans. These negotiations eventually concluded in the signing of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk (March 3, 1918) in which Russia left the war in return for massive territorial cessions. A week before Brest-Litovsk David Rowland Francis, the American ambassador to Russia, fearing the possible German occupation of Petrograd, fled by train to the sleepy provincial capital of Vologda 350 miles to the east. In the midst of these events the ambassador received some free (and uncharacteristically light-hearted) advice from the Food Administrator:

By this time you will be scurrying all over Russia trying to find a place to sleep. There is a very good house that I lived in for some time at Kyshtim—a station on the trans-Siberian line outside of Ekaterinburg—that was in fact a country palace built by a former owner of a property that I operated there for some time. You will find some very good pictures in it and the place is very decent to live in! But to be serious, I am anxious for your safety in this melee.

Caught between the demands of producers, and consumers, and criticized by politicians such as Missouri Senator James A. Reed, Hoover concluded: “The Food Administration is getting to be an impossible job. It is only a question of time now until you hear I have ‘cracked up.’ ” Finally, he expressed the hope that when Francis (who was a former mayor of St. Louis and governor of Missouri) returned to America he would drop by and “tell what you think of him [Senator Reed] in my stead.”5 As Food Administrator Hoover played no role in the next phase of the Russian tragedy. This was unfortunate since when Hoover a year later did offer advice to President Wilson on Russian policy, he wisely counseled against military intervention. Had he been asked his views in the spring of 1918 he presumably would have demonstrated the same good judgment as he did later. Led by the British the Allies pressured the Wilson administration to support military intervention in Siberia and North Russia. The British idea was to invade Russia through its northern ports of Murmansk and Archangel, take possession there of the extensive military supplies sent to the Provisional government, and reorganize the eastern front with the assistance of Russian volunteers. Against his better judgment President Wilson agreed to participate, provided the American troops were restricted to guarding military stores and to assisting the Czechoslovak Legion—an anti-Communist group of former war prisoners which was fighting its way across Siberia toward Vladivostok. In practice the intervention had completely unexpected results. In Siberia the Japanese embarrassed the Allies by sending in 72,000 troops and fishing in troubled waters. And in North Russia the British commander at Archangel did not learn for months that President Wilson had restricted the American participants to the role of non-combatants. As the Peace Conference opened at Paris, 5700 Americans at Archangel were fighting an undeclared winter war against the Bolsheviks. Hoover had been present in Paris for about six weeks before the Peace Conference formally convened. His official purpose was to coordinate Allied relief and reconstruction efforts in Europe. He was also in charge of the American Relief Administration; he was a member of an informal group which advised Wilson on economic policy; and he represented the United States on the pretentiously named Supreme Economic Council. With these diverse responsibilities, how did Hoover come to be President Wilson’s chief advisor on policy toward Russia? In the first place, the President was dissatisfied with the advice he had previously received about Russia from his friend Col. Edward M. House and from Secretary of State Robert Lansing, both of whom had urged military intervention. Possibly Wilson also sought some fresh advice on Russia because every solution suggested by the old advisors had failed spectacularly. First, Wilson was disillusioned by the Allied military intervention in North Russia and Siberia. Also, a proposal offered in the early stages of the conference whereby all parties to the Russian problem would hold discussions on an island near Constantinople failed—due to opposition from the French and from Russian émigré groups.6 Toward the end of March 1919, Wilson asked Hoover for his views on how to deal with

bolshevism. Apparently the request was made because Wilson valued Hoover’s energy, organizing ability, and good judgment, not because Hoover had any unusual expertise about Russia or possessed exceptional sources of information. Over the next month, in responding to the President’s request, Hoover produced two thoughtful essays on bolshevism and conceived a plan for humanitarian relief to Russia similar to the Belgian relief program which Hoover had directed in the early years of World War I. Probably the most important of Hoover’s efforts was his letter to Wilson of March 28, 1919. In this carefully polished document, which must have required hours of work, Hoover spelled out his basic ideas on how to respond to Soviet Russia: (1) non-intervention, (2) non-recognition, and (3) the establishment of “a second Belgian Relief Commission for Russia . . . to enter upon the humane work of saving life.” Hoover followed up these suggestions by proposing that the Norwegian humanitarian and polar explorer Fridtjof Nansen be appointed to head the Russian relief program. In this instance Hoover displayed a high degree of political shrewdness and demonstrated that he was not an innocent in the practice of international power politics. What Hoover did was to draft a cleverly-worded letter, which was signed by Nansen, and addressed to the members of the Council of Four (Wilson of the United States, Lloyd George of Britain, Clemenceau of France, and Orlando of Italy). Hoover’s “Nansen” letter (April 3, 1919) formally proposed the creation of the international humanitarian commission which Hoover had earlier mentioned in his letter to Wilson.7 Over the next month substantial opposition developed from the French press and the French government. Outwardly Clemenceau agreed to support the plan, but in fact the French opposed the Nansen mission and hoped for a military victory by the White Russians. Hoover responded to the French criticism and procrastination by releasing to the press a lengthy statement on bolshevism which, he told Col. House, had required three days and nights of effort. In essence Hoover blasted the “bankruptcy” of Communism and clearly stated his faith in the American system of capitalism with its emphasis on individual initiative and equality of opportunity. He also demonstrated a certain carelessness in composition as he got so absorbed in exposing the fallacies of Communism that he concluded his statement with a single paragraph of 2100 words. Col. House was very upset with Hoover, calling the statement “the most foolish thing I have known Hoover to do yet,” and speculating that Hoover was motivated by “an inordinate desire for publicity.” House felt Hoover’s anti-Soviet statement had destroyed any chance that Lenin would accept the Nansen proposal. Yet, it is doubtful whether Lenin, or anyone else for that matter, seriously read Hoover’s statement (especially its final paragraph). A good case can be made that it was the French and Russian émigré groups which undercut the Nansen proposal through tactics of delay. Finally in mid-May the proposal died when Lenin refused to accept the Allied demand that fighting in Russia cease as a condition of the Nansen mission.8 As a peacemaker and advisor on Russia, Hoover did not possess superhuman powers of foresight. Like most westerners, Hoover mistakenly expected that the Bolsheviks would soon fade into oblivion. He has been called naive and simplistic for equating bolshevism with starvation.9 But he has also been called “the only man who emerged from the ordeal of Paris with an enhanced reputation.”10 Probably the fairest judgment lies somewhere in between. Essentially Hoover’s recommendations were a blend of idealism, political realism, and common sense. His idealism was expressed in his support of humanitarian relief for Russia;

his sense of political realism was demonstrated in his recommendation not to recognize the Bolshevik government (surely it would have been an act of political foolishness for anyone contemplating a public career to have taken the side of Lenin and Trotsky during the Red Scare of 1919-1920, and Hoover was not a fool); finally, Hoover’s common sense was reflected in his opposition to Allied military intervention. At the very least the advice Hoover gave President Wilson on Russia was far more sensible than that offered by interventionists such as David R. Francis, Col. Edward M. House, Robert Lansing, and Winston Churchill. For the next three years Hoover had little direct contact with Russian problems. As an interested layman he must have kept track of developments in Russia through the press, including the end of the Allied intervention in 1919-1920, the defeat of the Whites in the Civil War, and Lenin’s startling introduction, in March 1921, of the New Economic Policy—a strategic and temporary retreat from Communism. Possibly Hoover’s growing dislike of the Soviet experiment was heavily influenced by the violently anti-Communist tone of the press which drew heavily upon White Russian émigré sources. Approval of the new regime was demonstrated by only a few disreputable socialists, I.W.W.’s, and “Reds.” When Hoover took office as Secretary of Commerce in March 1921 (the same month as the NEP) he was more anti-Soviet than at any time previously. Three weeks after taking office Hoover, joined by Secretary of State Charles Evans Hughes, issued a statement opposing the resumption of trade relations with an immoral regime which endorsed the principle that the end justified the means.11 Yet, quite unexpectedly, a natural disaster in Russia pushed Hoover’s views back toward the middle, leaving Secretary of State Hughes as America’s leading anti-Soviet spokesman. The catastrophe was the famine of 1921 which especially devastated the Ukraine and Volga regions. A combination of drought, civil war, and foreign intervention produced the destruction of even seed grain and draft animals. In the famine region there was a milling about of desperate people searching for food and numerous cases of cannibalism were documented. According to a British estimate, 35 million were starving to death. By means of a famous appeal for aid by the writer Maxim Gorky (July 13, 1921), the West became aware of the Russians’ plight. In his capacity as Chairman of the American Relief Administration, which was now a private organization, Hoover signified his willingness to organize a program of famine relief. An agreement was then signed with the Soviet government at Riga, Latvia, in August 1921, which permitted the A.R.A. a wide latitude in carrying out its relief activities. About the only restriction was that the A.R.A. was not to engage in political or commercial activities. Altogether 381 Americans served in Russia during the two-year span of the famine relief program.12 In effect the A.R.A. operation provided Hoover with a private source of information about conditions within the Soviet Union and about the character of the Soviet government. As a group the A.R.A. representatives flatly rejected the conventional stereotype of the Soviet Union as a diabolical menace to western civilization. Several of its administrators came to favor immediate recognition of the Soviet government and the immediate resumption of trade. Although they did not convince Hoover of the correctness of their views, they did force him to reconsider his opinions about Russia. That Hoover had a fairly open mind on the subject is demonstrated by the fact that he tolerated dissenting views within his organization.

A case in point was that of James P. Goodrich, a progressive Republican from Indiana, who was selected by Hoover as Vice-Chairman of the A.R.A. Purchasing Commission. A few months previously the fifty-seven-year-old Goodrich had retired from public office after completing four years as governor of Indiana. While vacationing in northern New York in August 1921, Goodrich received a telegram from Hoover asking him to come to Washington immediately to discuss the famine situation in Russia. Goodrich wondered why he had been selected since, as he himself admitted, “I had never been in Russia and I knew nothing about the country of the Great Bear.” If Hoover was concocting an insidious plan for undermining Communism through famine relief he completely succeeded in concealing his intentions from Goodrich. “On reaching Washington,” recalled Goodrich, “I found Colonel [William N.] Haskell [the Director of the A.R.A.] with the ‘Chief and after a brief interview it was decided that I was to go to Russia with an open mind to investigate the entire famine situation, learn the truth about Russia, and return as soon as the preliminary investigation was completed.”13 Between September 1921 and June 1922 Goodrich made three trips to the Soviet Union and sent extensive reports to Hoover about A.R.A. operations and about the slowly improving food situation in Russia. Goodrich appears to have taken to heart the instruction that he should approach the subject with an open mind. In his letters to Hoover, Goodrich made no effort to avoid unpopular recommendations and he made a bona fide effort to report what he saw as dispassionately as possible. During his first visit, for example, he found no evidence of food shortages near Petrograd or Moscow. But in the Volga river valley he found great evidence of suffering. He observed peasants in communes gathering “famine weeds” (cockle burrs and wild rose pods) to be mixed with rye and millet and ground into flour for bread. Items ordinarily discarded such as melon rinds and cabbage leaves were carefully saved. In a commune in Saratov, Goodrich reported, “I did not notice a single dog, a rather unusual condition for Russia, and on inquiring the local secretary of the commune told me that they had butchered about all of them and made them into bologna and sausage for use this winter.” More distressing to Goodrich was evidence of numerous deaths from starvation. In a commune on the Volga valley he counted “more than 100 new made graves.” He recounted to Hoover how he had discovered two young girls “their parents dead of cholera four days before and they with nothing to eat for four days but cabbage leaves and carrots eaten raw. Poor, hungry-looking, frightfully emaciated, half naked waifs, shivering in the cold, raw wind. I could tell you these things until you would be sick at heart as I have been as I saw them, but that would not help the situation, nor aid in the solution of the problem. . . . It is a condition that requires continued and effective action if the saving of human life is worthwhile.”14 And on a later visit Goodrich told a skeptical Soviet official that the A.R.A. was operating in Russia “solely because the [American] people believed it a Christian duty to feed the starving millions in Russia, with no ulterior purpose, and no hope of receiving anything in return.”15 If Hoover’s famine relief program had a political motive behind it, someone forgot to tell James P. Goodrich. Through Goodrich, Hoover made the acquaintance of the Russian-born businessman Alexander Gumberg. During World War I Gumberg had served as secretary and translator to Col. Raymond Robins of the American Red Cross Mission. In 1922 Gumberg was employed as a trade representative by the Far Eastern Republic (a temporary creation which was soon absorbed by the U.S.S.R.). His life’s ambition was to improve United States-Soviet relations

through the restoration of trade and through recognition. During the famine he had worked closely with Allen Wardwell of the American Red Cross in raising private relief funds. Just before his third trip to Russia, Goodrich asked Gumberg to accompany him as an adviser and translator. Because Gumberg had experienced chronic problems in getting a visa from the State Department, Goodrich asked Hoover’s assistance. As a result Hoover and Gumberg met twice at Hoover’s Washington office (May 20 and 22, 1922). Despite their totally different perspectives and the fact that their discussions often resembled a verbal barroom brawl, the two men found that they liked each other a great deal. Essentially Gumberg let Hoover have it with both barrels as he attacked the Commerce Secretary’s anti-trade and anti-recognition policy as shortsighted. Hoover fired back with gusto, stating that he had been warned Gumberg was a Bolshevik and he predicted that the Communist experiment would collapse within five years through the weight of its inefficiency. At the same time, however, they found much common ground, agreeing that Lenin was a leader of great stature, and upon the desirability of improving United States-Soviet relations through sending Gumberg to Moscow as Goodrich’s assistant. As Gumberg wrote a friend, the discussions with Hoover were “as good a time as I ever had in any two and a half hours of my life.” To his embarrassment, Hoover was blocked by hard liners in the State Department who refused to issue Gumberg a visa. But Gumberg did not blame Hoover for the fiasco, explaining “I have not lost faith in the faithfulness of the visa division to the ghost of Czar Nicholas.”16 Goodrich also found the State Department, not Hoover, to be the chief obstacle to normal relations with Russia. “I can’t talk to Hughes about it,” Goodrich complained to Hoover. “He takes the view of a technical lawyer.” Considering the Secretary of State a lost cause, Goodrich used Hoover as a sounding board for his ideas. He pointed out to Hoover that without exception the A.R.A. men with experience in Russia, such as Col. Haskell, Professor Frank Golder, Lincoln Hutchinson, and Cyril Quinn, all favored the opening of trade relations with Soviet Russia. Seeking to educate Hoover, Goodrich quoted a letter from Haskell: I think a great mistake is being made in not negotiating with the Soviet towards a trade agreement at least. In my mind it is foolish to pay any attention to what is published in their newspapers as what they do at some frontier etc. etc. . . . All those things are so insignificant compared to the big show. Furthermore, they would all disappear if friendly relations, i.e. business relations were inaugurated. Of course, they are bad in one sense and silly in another but when understood one can get on with them. We are doing business today with worse people.

Using an argument later advanced by Franklin D. Roosevelt, Goodrich maintained that it was unnatural and fraught with danger not to be on speaking terms with the Russians. “I would rather have them in the family circle where we can talk things over with them,” Goodrich concluded. “With the departure of the A.R.A. the last point of contact with Russia will be severed.”17 In principle, Hoover indicated that he agreed with much of what Goodrich had to say. “On the general question of some sort of trade relationship I am, of course, in agreement with you,” Hoover replied. But for a variety of reasons, about which one can only speculate, Hoover declined to endorse publicly the views of his A.R.A. colleagues. Political realism was probably one factor. Hoover in 1923 was a potential successor to Warren G. Harding. Already he had identified several of his rivals. One rival aspirant, as he expressed it to Goodrich, was

“your leading light from Indiana” (Senator James Watson); another was “the leading light from California” (Senator Hiram Johnson).18 Hoover would not have been human had he failed to consider how taking a controversial position on Russia would affect his political future. Yet, at the same time, Hoover was basically more skeptical than Goodrich and the other A.R.A. leaders of Soviet goodwill. In the case of the NEP Hoover’s cautious attitude was justified as, contrary to the expectations of Goodrich, the NEP proved to be only a temporary retreat from Communism. Yet, Hoover was obviously mistaken in his belief that the Communist system would collapse within a few years. In the end, Hoover remained true to his original approach of nonintervention, nonrecognition, and food. He continued to watch the evolution of the Soviet system with a skeptical eye, always looking for signs of failure. But he had no grand design for overthrowing the Soviet government. Consistently Hoover defended his relief activities as strictly nonpolitical. In 1919, when the Nation accused Hoover of using food as a weapon against bolshevism, Hoover denied the charge and accused the editor of leaping to conclusions. (“You have slid to second base by running away from your original point,” was the way Hoover phrased it.)19 An even more persuasive proof that Hoover was motivated by humanitarian, nonpolitical motives is contained in a critique written by Hoover in 1925 with reference to Prof. Harold H. Fisher’s official history of the Russian relief program. Hoover was not at all pleased with the manuscript, finding it to be “lacking in focus. You get a blurred picture of a lot of things but it does not leave any impression as to the highlights of things accomplished.” The next two paragraphs, addressed to the public relations officer of the A.R.A. and not written for public consumption, clearly summarized Hoover’s conception of the Russian famine relief program: The diplomatic side is set out at great length, detailed and in fine picture, but somehow I do not get a sense of focus out of it that all these actions were for one concentrated purpose—to save the lives of starving people. One sort of gets the impression that we were going through all these motions as a setting up exercise to instruct the world on Bolshevism. In the matter of distribution there is one weakness and that is that at no place in the book do you get the impression of having saved anything like ten to twenty million human lives. One comes away from reading it with the sense that a lot of food was poked in somewhere under a lot of difficulties with the Bolsheviks but there is no great picture of an organism employing 180,000 Russians, with 17,000 distributing stations feeding directly nine or ten million people, furnishing seed for the forthcoming harvest, presided over by a lot of American youngsters who had grown years in mental and physical stature under a week’s experience.20

These were the words of a driving, well-organized, politically ambitious cabinet officer who was also a committed humanitarian and a fairly moderate anti-Communist. NOTES 1. An example of this theme was contained in a 1934 article in the American Mercury which suggested that Hoover had brutally terminated famine relief to the Soviet Union because his mining concession had not been restored. By this callous action Hoover supposedly condemned five million innocent Russians to a slow death by starvation. Richard Norton Smith, An Uncommon Man: The Triumph of Herbert Hoover (New York, 1984), p. 190. 2. Peter G. Filene, Americans and the Soviet Experiment, 1917-1933 (Cambridge, 1967), p. 78. 3. A full account of Hoover’s role in Russia as an engineer-financier is lucidly presented in George H. Nash, The Life of Herbert Hoover: The Engineer, 1874-1914 (New York, 1983), pp. 426-446.

4. Herbert Hoover, The Memoirs of Herbert Hoover, vol. I, Years of Adventure, 1874-1920 (New York, 1952), pp. 102108. 5. Hoover to Francis, March 6, 1918, David R. Francis Papers, Box 32, Missouri Historical Society, St. Louis, Missouri. 6. Francis William O’Brien, ed., Two Peacemakers in Paris: The Hoover-Wilson Post-Armistice Letters, 1918-1920 (College Station, Texas, and London, 1978), pp. xxvii-xxxii; John M. Thompson, Russia, Bolshevism, and the Versailles Peace (Princeton, 1966), p. 240. 7. Herbert Hoover, The Ordeal of Woodrow Wilson (New York, 1958), p. 117; O’Brien, Two Peacemakers in Paris, pp. 85-90, 102-104. 8. Thompson, Russia, Bolshevism, and the Versailles Peace, pp. 257-259; O’Brien, Two Peacemakers in Paris, pp. 135141. 9. Eugene P. Trani, “Herbert Hoover and the Russian Revolution, 1917-1920,” in Lawrence E. Gelfand, Herbert Hoover: The Great War and Its Aftermath, 1914-1923 (Iowa City, 1979), pp. 133-134. 10. John Maynard Keynes, The Economic Consequences of the Peace (New York, 1920), p. 174, footnote. 11. Joan Hoff-Wilson, Ideology and Economics: U.S. Relations with the Soviet Union, 1918-1933 (Columbia, Mo., 1974), pp. 25-28; Filene, Americans and the Soviet Experiment, pp. 105-106. 12. Benjamin M. Weissman, Herbert Hoover and Famine Relief to Soviet Russia: 1921-1923 (Stanford, Calif., 1974), pp. 3-66. 13. James P. Goodrich, “Manuscript on Various Trips to Russia, 1921-1922,” Chapter A., undated, James P. Goodrich Papers, Box 16, HHPL. 14. Goodrich to Hoover, November 1, 1921, American Relief Administration, Documents of the American Relief Administration, Russian Operations, 1921-1923 (Stanford, Calif., 1931), vol. Ill, pp. 403-410, typewritten, HHPL. 15. Goodrich, “Manuscript,” Chapter M, Goodrich Papers, Box 16, HHPL. 16. James K. Libbey, Alexander Gumberg and Soviet-American Relations, 1917-1933 (Lexington, Ky., 1977), pp. 77-84. 17. Goodrich to Hoover, January 30, 1923, Commerce Papers, Box 240, HHPL. 18. Hoover to Goodrich, February 1, 1923, Commerce Papers, Box 240, HHPL. 19. Weissman, Herbert Hoover and Famine Relief, p. 19. 20. Hoover to George Barr Baker, November 19, 1925, Commerce Papers, Box 240, HHPL.

6

Herbert Hoover’s Military Policy

John R. M. Wilson

Herbert Hoover’s military policy reflected its author’s well-integrated philosophy. It comprised three vital elements that meshed and reinforced each other in a system of unusual consistency. The first element, stemming from Hoover’s Quaker religion and his experience in the First World War, was a vigorous opposition to war. Seeking to avoid war, he did not succumb to the interwar isolationist mood, nor did he support the minority that urged an activist role on the United States. Rather he sought to reduce the likelihood of war by promoting arms limitation and reduction and by making the Kellogg-Briand Treaty of 1928 a cornerstone of his foreign policy. The second element of his military policy reflected his overall belief in government economy. His efforts to economize on military spending failed, however, until the Depression necessitated painful cuts in all areas. Finally, Hoover believed strongly that the armed forces should provide adequate national defense. He managed to ensure low-cost preparedness by defining it narrowly. Despite protests from the Navy, he limited American obligations to the defense of the Western Hemisphere and continued to concede the Philippines and the Far Eastern trade to Japan in the event of war with that nation. The United States should fight for her independence, but not to “prevent or end other peoples’ wars.”1 I Webster’s Third New International Dictionary defines a pacifist as one who is “opposed to war or violence as a means of settling disputes” and as “one who adopts an attitude of nonresistance.” Herbert Hoover may have qualified under the first definition, but surely not under the second—he assuredly did not subscribe to nonresistance. As he wrote to a friend when Japan attacked China in 1937, “There are plenty of ways that we can establish our honor and our dignity without going to war. . . . I am not particularly a pacifist, but I have felt that war should be resolved as the answer to assaults upon our national freedom and this alone.”2 Yet he was clearly the President closest to being a pacifist. He passed up more opportunities for intervention abroad than any other twentieth-century American chief of state, notably in Manchuria, Panama, Honduras, and Cuba.3 Moreover, he consistently sought sensible, moral ways to avoid war. Hoover maintained that Quakers were not ostriches, but rather active workers against war.4 Though his “policies never constituted the public witness the Quakers have made against all war” (from the left The Nation could denounce him as a “sham Quaker”),5 he did earn condemnation from military minds. Deputy Chief of Staff George Van Horn Moseley claimed Hoover didn’t believe in war nor in preparation for it,6 while a frustrated Secretary of State Henry Stimson decried in his diary the “tragedy of [Hoover’s] timidity.”7 In fact, Hoover recognized far more than most chief executives the dangers war held. A war for democracy, he argued, was a contradiction in terms—war could well bring despotism and undermine the democracy in whose name it was fought. His realistic, bleak assessment of human nature reflected his perception of World War I: even victory for the Allies had brought

catastrophe, including financial chaos and the hatreds that held the seeds of another world war.8 Hoover was particularly appalled by militarism, which he defined as “the direct or indirect fostering of the belief that war is ennobling to a nation, that war is the moment of a nation’s greatness, that a martial spirit is a beneficent catalyzer of the blood and spirit of the nation, that nations even in peace gain in power and add to their prestige and prosperity by dominating armament.”9 His experience as head of the Belgian Relief Organization in the Great War had forcefully brought home to him the horror of war. His unique position permitted him to see vividly the carnage on both sides of the battle lines, but without the blinding ties of patriotic commitment to either side. War was not a quaint abstraction; war was hell. He knew —he’d been there. Yet many—or all—presidents oppose war. What made Hoover almost unique was what Joan Hoff-Wilson has called his trademark—consistency.10 Only Hoover and Jimmy Carter among this century’s presidents have resisted the temptation to flex American muscle. On the contrary, Hoover sought his diplomatic and military goals within a framework of international cooperation and harmony: arms limitation treaties, interlocking security treaties in the Pacific, cooperation (albeit limited) with the League of Nations, international arbitration, the KelloggBriand Treaty, his new Good Neighbor policy toward Central America, and moral suasion in foreign relations.11 Unfortunately, Hoover ran into a roadblock in his attempt to limit arms sales abroad. The Senate had refused its consent to a multilateral 1925 treaty to control the arms traffic. Hoover, recognizing that a unilateral ban had limited value, tried to win Senate endorsement in December 1931—and failed. A year later, in a move foreshadowing the neutrality legislation of the mid-1930s, Hoover sought to extend a 1922 ban on arms sales to countries with violent domestic troubles to international conflicts (specifically, to a Bolivia-Paraguay fight). Congress refused him again. A last try to win consent to the 1925 treaty failed in early 1933, as did Franklin Roosevelt’s attempts to embargo arms shipments to aggressors. Hoover thus failed in his efforts to reduce the threat of war through multinational restrictions on arms sales.12 * * * Complementing Hoover’s hatred of war were his efforts to reduce army and navy spending, efforts that included a number of congruent policies. The economy-minded president encountered difficulties attacking military budgets head on, in large part because they were already quite low. Military spending in fiscal 1931, about $765 million, comprised about 21% of government expenditures as opposed to $300 billion, or 30% in 1987. The Army, authorized by the National Defense Act of 1920 to have a strength of 280,000, got by with 118,750 enlisted men and 12,000 officers who were expected to provide a skeleton to be fleshed out in a national emergency. Nevertheless, Hoover announced in July 1929 a detailed survey of the military establishment to determine where further cuts might occur. His delegating the survey to the Army’s general staff renders suspect his expectation of finding any

real economies. The generals proved predictably reticent to pinpoint any possible cuts; on the contrary, most recommended increases in funding. Hoover was sufficiently dismayed by the report, even though he should have expected nothing else, that he suppressed it in order to reduce the pressures for spending hikes. Hoover strongly believed that the best way to reduce arms without sacrificing security was through multilateral treaties effecting balanced reductions. The meager U.S. Army strength did not give the president the bargaining power he possessed in naval tonnage, however. He did make a dramatic proposal in June 1932 to the ill-fated World Disarmament Conference in Geneva, recommending the abolition of tanks, bombers, chemical warfare, large mobile guns, and one-third of all troops above those necessary for police work, along with further naval cuts. American army leaders applauded his suggestions, for their strength was already so skeletal that they would not have had to cut anything. Hoover’s failure to agree to a consultative treaty led to French opposition, and the proposal was shelved a month later.13 In Navy spending, the one field where the United States possessed bargaining leverage, Hoover achieved impressive results. As Secretary of Commerce he had advised Secretary of State Charles Evans Hughes to have arms reduction details worked out in advance of the 192122 Washington Conference; this led to the first actual arms reductions ever negotiated. The United States, Britain, and Japan cut back on their capital ships (over 10,000 tons) to a 5:5:3 tonnage ratio. The United States agreed not to build western Pacific fortifications Congress would in any case not have funded, so concessions were not painful, though Admiral William Veazie Pratt was one of the few naval officers involved who could appreciate that. Pratt perceived that the treaty would cement the Anglo-American friendship while dissipating much of the distrust between the Japanese and Americans.14 But the ceilings applied to only 30% of the signatories’ navies. A 1927 conference in Geneva to extend the coverage to smaller vessels foundered as the naval officers doing the negotiating failed to achieve results comparable to those of the earlier diplomats. When Hoover became president, he anticipated with relish the London Conference scheduled for 1930. He assembled a crack negotiating team, headed by Secretary of State Stimson, and made the congenial Pratt the top uniformed advisor.15 Hoover, believing as ever in the importance of a “conference before the conference,” met with British Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald, an old friend, in October 1929. Despite the good will engendered by MacDonald’s American visit, Hoover found his hopes for appreciable naval reductions evaporating; it was soon clear that limitation, not reduction, was all that could be expected. The negotiators signed the London Treaty on April 22, 1930. It limited tonnage of cruisers, destroyers, and submarines, continued the holiday on capital ship building, and included an escalator clause should a signatory feel threatened by non-limited powers like France or Italy. The big three naval powers set a ceiling of 1,123,000 tons for the United States (ratio 100), 1,150,000 tons for Britain (102.4), and 714,000 tons for Japan (63.6). Critics immediately attacked the modification of the 5:5:3 ratio, but could not make a very effective case since in fact the U.S.-Britain tonnage ratio in 1930 was 5:74.7:34.2 in 8”-gun cruisers and 5:12.6:6.9 in 6”-gun cruisers.16 Senate hearings found the pragmatic Admiral Pratt the most compelling defender of the treaty. He argued that Britain and Japan had agreed to curtail their building programs for five

years so the United States could catch up—the Americans would be no worse off even if they didn’t take advantage of the respite to plunge into construction. By a 58-9 vote the Senate approved this reasoning and on July 22, 1930, President Hoover proudly signed the treaty. He had taken the initiative in pushing for the conference, personally approved its major decisions, and maneuvered the completed product through the Senate. The achievement proved to be the highest of his foreign policy record. While direct assaults on military spending were unproductive, Hoover discovered a happy convergence of his ideals when he launched the Good Neighbor policy toward Central America. The Quaker leader disliked the Marine Corps, a feeling its leadership reciprocated: he saw marines as poor American representatives in other countries.17 Not only did the new policy reduce the American military presence abroad but it curbed the growing American impulse to impose military solutions on Latin American problems and saved money at the same time. Such a coincidence of ideals and self-interest could hardly be resisted. Following his election in 1928, Hoover took a seven-week trip to Latin America, the one area of the world he had not already visited. He included Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica in his itinerary and announced that he preferred Latin American countries to “work out their own salvation,” even if it did not go the way the United States might prefer. In short, the United States would stop intervening in the internal affairs of their southern neighbors.18 The policy was momentarily clarified by the publication in early 1930 of former Under Secretary of State J. Reuben Clark’s “Memorandum on the Monroe Doctrine,” written in 1928. Clark, pursuing a directive from Secretary of State Frank Kellogg, had separated the Roosevelt Corollary from the Monroe Doctrine and repudiated the former. Stimson supported the Memorandum, but Hoover, more concerned with Senate sensitivities toward the London Treaty, did not approve such a straightforward change of policy. In early 1931 Stimson announced that the Doctrine should be viewed as pitting the United States against Europe, not against Latin America. Hoover hedged, however, by reaffirming his belief that American arms, though not for aggression, would defend the entire Western Hemisphere. South of the border, this statement caused considerable skepticism about the extent of the American policy shift. Hoover’s actions were more resolute than his words. In December 1929, 1600 American marines were in Nicaragua, remaining at the request of the Nicaraguan government until local police could be trained. As Walter LaFeber has caustically noted, Hoover found that Anastasio Somoza’s soon-to-be notorious National Guard could maintain “an orderly, profitable system” for a much lower cost than American troops.19 Accordingly, withdrawal was begun on June 3, 1931, and completed just two months before Hoover left office. A treaty negotiated in 1932 by Dana G. Munro, American minister to Haiti, to remove troops from that country failed to pass the Haitian Congress. It did, however, provide the basis for an executive agreement negotiated by Franklin Roosevelt in 1934. Complementing the withdrawal of American troops from the region was the abandonment of the Wilsonian policy of only recognizing constitutionally legitimate governments. On a traditional basis, the United States established relations with new regimes in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Panama, and Peru. Latin America’s reception of Hoover’s overtures was cool. While pleased with his announced policy of nonintervention, most of the region’s leaders wanted a formal pledge similar to that which had been denied them at the Havana Conference of 1928. The desired

promise was signed by the Roosevelt Administration at the next hemispheric gathering in 1933. Thus the Good Neighbor ideal became identified with Roosevelt and the Democrats, who already enjoyed a far better reputation than the Republicans in Latin America. The Latins viewed Hoover favorably, but he served only one term, did not hold a hemispheric conference, and did not endorse the Clark Memorandum. Nevertheless, Hoover’s administration promoted a distinct improvement in inter-American relations, and by reducing the application of American military power, Hoover achieved cuts in military spending he was unable to manage in a frontal assault.20 * * * Preparedness completed the interlocking trio of precepts guiding Hoover’s military policy. The President endorsed the cliché “if you want peace, prepare for war.” Early in 1929 he asked his military staffs if American defenses were sufficiently strong to prevent an enemy landing in the continental United States or the Western Hemisphere. Because of the narrow limits of Hoover’s question, the answer was an emphatic affirmative. The President believed that to maintain more arms wasted money, threatened neighbors, and increased ill will.21 After Japan invaded Manchuria in 1931, Hoover began hearing warnings that American forces were at or below the minimum needed for security. Yet he consistently referred to the American defense posture as being in a high state of effectiveness and efficiency. This evaluation distorted his top aides’ feelings (especially about the Philippines), but reflected Hoover’s narrower definition of national security. Fundamental to it was his acceptance of the spheres of influence implicitly set down at the Washington Conference—they conceded the western Pacific to Japan, so to build up American strength in the region would likely lead to an escalating arms race that would be expensive and unproductive. Hoover subscribed to a second cliché as well: armaments races inevitably lead to war.22 To be effective, preparedness required a clear vision of the chief threat to national security. Unlike many observers of his era, Hoover perceived communism as the most crucial rival to the United States. He gained first-hand acquaintance with it in the Soviet Union during and after World War I, perceived its inherent political repressiveness, and staunchly opposed it thereafter. Though he received a scroll from the Soviet government in 1923 thanking him for helping save 15 million from starving, he would probably not have been surprised by the brief one-paragraph citation in the Great Soviet Encyclopedia, which omits that service and reads in part, “Hoover’s foreign policy contributed to the restoration of Germany’s military-industrial potential and encouraged Japanese aggression in the Far East, with the aim of later turning Germany and Japan against the USSR.” Early in his presidency he considered recognizing the Soviet Union to prevent trade rivals from garnering Soviet trade, but the Depression somehow made him inflexible and he thereafter resisted any attempt to change the nonrecognition policy.23 Hoover’s anti-Soviet tendencies came to the fore in 1939 when the Russian invasion of Poland, in coordination with Hitler, and attacks on Latvia, Estonia, and Finland revealed her as a naked aggressor. He asked, with some justice, why the American government was less outraged by communist

tyranny than by the Nazi variety Roosevelt so eloquently condemned.24 In keeping with his consistent philosophy, he strongly opposed aid to Stalin in 1941 after Hitler’s attack on the Soviet Union. As Missouri’s Senator Harry Truman suggested, the two totalitarian powers would be allowed to destroy each other. The invasion, Hoover aptly noted, made the arguments for “joining the war to bring the four freedoms to mankind a gargantuan jest.”25 With the onset of the Cold War, the foreign policy establishment caught up with Hoover in seeing the Soviet Union as the evil empire. Somewhat surprisingly, however, Hoover did not much fear domestic communism. Unlike fellow Quaker A. Mitchell Palmer, he did not join in red-baiting in 1919, suggesting that reactionaries posed a greater threat to the United States than a few radicals. As President, with the awkward exception of the bonus march, he did not “red hunt” or encourage anti-communist hysteria. After World War II he refused to join the American Liberty League or the China Lobby, considering them irrationally extreme.26 He believed confidently that the American people would not choose communism with the American way open to them. Hoover’s anti-communism partially explains his low-key approach to Japanese aggression in the Far East. He perceived Japan as a bastion against Soviet expansionism in the area, and by defining the Soviet threat as paramount he minimized the importance of Japan’s actions. Further, his extensive experience in China helped him take the long view of history there. Unlike Westerners, the Chinese were able to be patient and Hoover believed that even should Japan take over China, the latter would win in the end by absorbing the Japanese, adapting slightly, and continuing to exist for additional millennia. Although Hoover opposed Nippon’s expansionism, he maintained that the “general disaster of war was far more dangerous . . . and, in the long run, unnecessary.”27 Joan Hoff-Wilson has argued, in fact, that Hoover was pro-Japanese.28 He appointed the sympathetic William R. Castle under secretary of state in 1931. More important, he showed a rare wisdom and sense of perspective, recognizing that Japan’s interests in Manchuria were not unlike those of the United States in Latin America, and thus in congruence with the “spheres of influence” world view. Besides, he confided to Stimson about Japan’s nouveau imperialism, the distinction between Japanese “morals and those of the older empires was one of timing.”29 In any event, Hoover opted against a military response, resisted Stimson’s desire to impose economic sanctions since he saw them as threatening to cause a confrontation, and relied upon moral sanctions—the Hoover-Stimson doctrine. As announced on January 7, 1932, it refused to recognize the legitimacy of any arrangement contrary to the Kellogg-Briand Treaty, the Open Door policy, or United States treaty rights in China. The League endorsed the doctrine on March 4. Hoover was not without recourse to more concerted action, though; when Japan attacked Shanghai, with its large international community, on January 28, he dispatched 400 marines and all vessels available in the Far East to ensure the safety of the American citizens there. Within five weeks, the Japanese had departed.30 During the heyday of Cold War historical writing between 1945 and 1965, Hoover, Roosevelt, and Congress all drew criticism from consensus historians for their failure to stand up against Hitler and the Japanese as they drove toward World War II. Viewed from the perspective of a superpower enforcing a Pax Americana on the world, the non-interventionism

of the thirties seemed a naive attempt to preserve the innocence and non-involvement of the American past. As Selig Adler has astutely noted, however, the national upheaval occasioned by the Vietnam War profoundly shook historians’ confidence in the easy Cold War assumptions. New Left historians came to see wisdom in Hoover’s military and diplomatic attitudes. William Appleman Williams noted that Hoover’s call for freedom of action in international affairs represented the continuation of a cherished American principle set down in Washington’s Farewell Address. Its wisdom was rediscovered by a generation appalled at the post-1945 network of alliances that threatened to lead to constant American war. Hoover had not retreated into isolationism, Robert Tucker noted, but had simply offered an intelligent alternative to the self-assumed global responsibility that led the United States into a divisive war in Vietnam.31 Hoover’s long-range vision had proven much more hardy than its critics had anticipated. II The success of a President’s policies depends in large part on the abilities and loyalties of the people he selects to implement them. In general, Hoover combined good fortune with wisdom in assembling his military team. Escaping the massive bureaucracies of the War and Navy Departments was impossible, but Hoover appointed a very capable group of men to their top positions and thus overcame some of the inertia. He searched for five qualities in his appointees: integrity, public esteem, sympathy with his ideas, general efficiency, and administrative ability. In addition, he inspired a sixth quality: a fierce loyalty to “the Chief” that lasted far beyond his years in office. The caliber of these men demonstrates the importance Hoover attached to their jobs. Secretary of the Navy Charles Francis Adams, a “seaman at heart” through his yachting activities,32 served capably at a time when naval strength was an important pawn in international bargaining. His administration of the Navy Department was not without flaws, for he had some difficulty quieting dissent. His integrity, however, was beyond question. More than some of his colleagues, he was torn by his conflicting loyalties to the President and the Navy, but once he had argued for his beliefs, he loyally supported Hoover’s decisions. Adams impressed Hoover enough to move the President to wish he had appointed him instead of Stimson Secretary of State, perhaps because Adams supported Hoover’s resistance to economic sanctions as a diplomatic tool.33 Juxtaposed with the drive by “big-navy” advocates to make him President of the Navy League in 1933, this tribute from Hoover illustrates Adams’ remarkable breadth. Hoover’s choices of his Secretaries of War were politically motivated. This was especially true of former Iowa Congressman James Good, whom Hoover chose over two men with better qualifications. Good died before he could demonstrate his administrative capabilities. Patrick J. Hurley, his subordinate and successor—and the first Secretary of War ever to have been a private—proved a talented administrator and loyal ally to the President. One of Hoover’s closest friends in the government, Hurley helped smooth relations between the President and the Army, faithfully supported his programs, and generally demonstrated that

a political appointment did not necessarily involve mediocrity. He corresponded with Hoover until his death in 1963. Roosevelt attested to his ability by delegating considerable responsibility to him as a diplomat during the Second World War, despite the fact that Hurley had been a strongly partisan Republican under Hoover. Chief of Staff Douglas MacArthur ranks as one of the outstanding soldiers in American history. He served Hoover well as an administrator, organizer, and leader. The degree of his support for Army budget restraint to assist the nation’s economic recovery was unusual for a military leader. Hoover regarded MacArthur very highly, perhaps in part because the general was so well in tune with his political ideas. The two corresponded until the general died, and Hoover called him “not only a great soldier but also a great statesman.” The President’s support for MacArthur and Hurley following the bonus march (see below) demonstrates that loyalty was not one-sided in those relationships.34 Chief of Naval Operations William V. Pratt was an outstanding complement to his Army counterpart. Broadminded, extremely capable, realistic, and innovative, Pratt’s thinking was characterized as five laps ahead of the State Department and ten ahead of the rest of the Navy.35 His sophisticated outlook precluded his taking a narrow view of the “good of the service.” He actively searched out economies to help Hoover during the Depression, and the attachment of the two men continued until Pratt’s death in 1957. Hoover told his widow that he had “never possessed a more loyal friend” and that Pratt was “the greatest Admiral of them all.”36 Although Pratt’s ideas diverged from those of his naval colleagues and prompted some talk of a sacrifice of principles, the admiral’s philosophy was well established before Hoover became President. Hoover was fortunate to have such an ideal leader available. The overall quality of Hoover’s top military appointees was high, particularly in the vital positions occupied by Adams, Hurley, MacArthur, and Pratt. The latter two represent conscious presidential choices based on service records and indicate the high regard Hoover had for individual ability. Adams was more an unknown quantity when he received his appointment, but he proved himself on the job. Hurley, originally appointed Assistant Secretary of War in payment for a political debt, earned his promotion to the cabinet by outstanding work. Few presidents have surrounded themselves with such high quality military leadership. * * * The effects of Hoover’s leadership on the long-term development of a modern, powerful military establishment, however, were largely negative. Guided by his fundamental antipathy toward martial expenditures and pressured by the onslaught of the Depression, he proved unresponsive to the demands of those urging development of new weapons systems. In naval affairs, Hoover must shoulder responsibility alone. Adams consistently urged more spending on the Navy than was approved. At the London Conference, Adams and Pratt succeeded in halting the naval arms race for five years, but the impetus for the agreement came from Hoover; in fact, the basic outlines of the settlement were already drawn before the conference began. Adams was not completely satisfied with the terms of the treaty, and Pratt’s support was strong in large part because he recognized that the President and Congress were unsympathetic to naval construction. Hoover, however, opposed building up the Navy as a

matter of principle. The most promising new weapon in the naval arsenal during the twenties and thirties was the aircraft carrier. Pratt showed himself a staunch advocate of air power during the fleet exercises of 1930.37 Adams does not appear to have been a strong supporter of the air arm, but Hoover’s presidency proved an obstacle to the growth of a new aviation program. Hoover’s failure to press for new carrier construction is largely responsible for the legislative branch not authorizing any during his term, for Congress authorized one carrier during Coolidge’s last year in office and three more during Roosevelt’s first two years. In fact, Congress authorized no ships whatsoever during the Hoover Administration. Finally, Hoover’s attitudes toward the budget precluded his taking Roosevelt’s approach to the Depression and providing the subsequent boom in naval construction. Since Roosevelt’s principal goal was recovery, not construction, the Navy benefits were a side effect, but one the Navy would have been grateful to receive under Hoover. Hoover’s opposition to martial spending, as well as to deficit spending in general, played a major part in the differences between the two administrations in their handling of naval affairs. In Army matters, MacArthur and Hoover must share the blame for blocking progress. MacArthur’s ambiguity toward the development of the Air Corps reflects a basic Hoover attitude. For several months during the spring of 1932 the Chief of Staff supported the idea of abolishing military aviation altogether, both because it proved such a drain on Army appropriations and because an international agreement not to subsidize aviation would be a major step toward disarmament.38 This second reason sounds very much like the approach Hoover favored to avoid escalation with new weapons systems; his proposals to the Geneva Conference in 1932 included the abolition of tanks, large mobile guns, and chemical warfare. MacArthur’s attitudes during the Hoover Administration do not suggest a progressive, innovative mind but rather a fairly conservative mind well capable of subordination to the conservative civilian leadership. On the other hand, the general’s initiatives in economy matters, reflecting an acceptance of Army responsibility for preserving the whole American system and not just itself, demonstrate an unusual breadth. In sum, an appointee who staunchly defended the Army above all else, while conceivably more valuable to the Army, would have been a poor choice for a subordinate; loyalty to Hoover precluded overenthusiastic support for new Army programs. As far as spending was concerned, the Depression forced Hoover to reduce levels. Despite his desire to cut outlays, despite the survey of the military establishment, despite participation in the Geneva Conference, Hoover was unable to slow spending until forced to do so by the economic crisis. The constant blandishments of the military press about the poor state of national preparedness, combined with the results of the survey, must have convinced Hoover of the wisdom of slowly increasing the levels of military spending. The Army, less favored by Roosevelt than the Navy or the Air Corps, found the going even rougher following Hoover’s defeat. Appropriations declined, the Army dissipated its strength in relief measures such as the Civilian Conservation Corps, and only in 1936 did expenditures begin to respond to the growing international tension. In contrast to the naval situation, Hoover appears to have been more sympathetic to the Army than was his successor. Veterans, while not part of the active military, did fall into the military portion of Hoover’s

controversial “pocket budget,” which added them and interest on the debt growing out of World War I to calculate that “the military” took 71% of the budget. The President’s relations with the veterans betray a rather surprising inconsistency toward this group with such a large impact on the budget. The most famous, and disastrous, event was Hoover’s dispersal of the bonus army. The confrontation occurred in Washington on July 28, 1932. Administration leaders had resolved to disperse the remnant of the Bonus Expeditionary Force (BEF) that had “occupied” the capital since early June. The veterans, some 20,000 strong, had gathered to pressure Congress into passing Congressman Wright Patman’s bonus bill, which would pay each of them a sum for having served during World War I. Hoover had opposed the measure from the start, for it would require $1.7 billion from the already empty treasury. On June 13 the House passed the bill, but two days later the Senate rejected it. With nothing better to do, most of the veterans remained in the capital; few took advantage of Congressional appropriations to pay their way home. On July 16 Congress adjourned. The BEF at last began to disperse, but more than 10,000 men remained on July 28. Despite the good behavior of the bonus army, Hoover was uneasy. Ogden Mills, Secretary of the Treasury, provided a pretext for dispersing it by ordering a number of veterans evicted from a building scheduled for demolition. The final deadline was July 28. That morning, when 200 men refused to leave the condemned building, the police moved in and ousted them after a battle in which two veterans were killed. Though the situation calmed, more trouble seemed likely. Early that afternoon the District Commissioners asked Hoover for Army assistance in restoring order. After waiting an hour to get the request in writing, Hoover ordered MacArthur to clear the affected area. Hoover’s intent was to force the men to return to their camps, where they would be checked the following day to ascertain the number of communists involved in the disturbance. Despite explicit orders from Hoover not to pursue the veterans past the Anacostia Bridge, MacArthur followed them across the bridge and permitted the police to finish burning the encampments once the veterans had set the torch to them. He had effectively dispersed the bonus army. Hoover was outraged. He demanded public acknowledgement of their responsibility from the Chief of Staff and Hurley, who had concurred in MacArthur’s action. With an election barely three months away, Hoover had no desire to be pilloried for ordering the Army to attack those who had defended the nation. His two subordinates held their ground, however, arguing that they had in fact prevented further bloodshed (the Army fired no shots during the rout, despite later claims). MacArthur said he had uncovered machine guns in the camps, and was confident that communist agitators were planning a major confrontation with the government. Hoover relented, having uncharacteristically suspected communist influence himself, and thus placed himself in the awkward position of having to prove a communist plot to justify the military action. When he was unable to do so, he found his reputation as a great humanitarian seriously undermined. Historian Donald J. Lisio believes Hoover should have fired his two subordinates outright for their disobedience.39 In fact, of course, Hurley and MacArthur were two of Hoover’s most trusted advisors and also men with whom he shared many political views. Notwithstanding his

Quaker religion, Hoover was strikingly close to them, and standing behind them at this time caused him severe political damage. Loyalty can be costly.40 In less publicized, more prosaic veterans’ affairs, however, Hoover evinced a generosity more in line with his reputation as a humanitarian. On July 21, 1930, by executive order he established the Veterans Administration, combining the Veterans Bureau, the Bureau of Pensions, and the National Home for Disabled Volunteer Soldiers. The President estimated savings from this model consolidation at $10 to $15 million per year, a reflection of his consistent drive for economy. Yet the number of veterans hospitals jumped from 50 to 75 and the number of beds rose from 26,000 to 45,000 during his term. More remarkably, Hoover provided that veterans should be treated for non-service connected disabilities as well as the noncontroversial maladies stemming from active duty. This departure more than doubled recipients, from 376,500 in 1930 to 853,800 in 1933. When FDR took office and saw that one-fifth of the hardpressed budget was going to veterans, he slashed the 420,000 non-service related recipients as an obvious and justifiable economy measure. It appears that Hoover’s concern over high military costs was at least partly induced by his generous interpretation of the nation’s obligation to its veterans.41 III To assess Hoover’s military policy, we must reexamine its three components: opposition to war, economy, and preparedness. In opposing war, Hoover pursued the hallowed American principle of independence handed down by George Washington. Throughout the nineteenth century, while the nation expanded across the continent and benefited from its separation from Europe, the policy could perhaps best be termed independent isolationism. With the dawn of the twentieth century, however, the Spanish-American War and activist leaders like Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson radically revised this policy into a sort of independent internationalism. The United States began playing an active role on the international scene but preserved the independence it had grown to prize. In 1919 Hoover favored joining the League of Nations, but with reservations preserving that treasured freedom of action; that is, international involvement was fine if the nation was not committed to actions going against its best interests.42 The limits of American willingness to get involved were illustrated by Hoover’s rejection of a consultative pact with France in 1930. The French (and with them the Italians) refused to endorse the London Treaty naval tonnage limits unless the United States would agree to a consultative treaty with France. Though Secretary of State Stimson argued that the United States already had a virtual obligation to consult if the Kellogg-Briand Treaty was violated, Hoover refused to agree. Franco-Italian adherence was lost, necessitating an escalator clause for the other signatories.43 Hoover would not tolerate even that small limitation on American freedom of action. He did endorse and enthusiastically support the Kellogg-Briand Treaty, for it gave the United States an international role without any commitment to act. Hoover’s drive to establish the principle of non-recognition of territory gained in contravention of the treaty won League

support. But non-recognition relied on the pressure of world opinion, it cost nothing, and it entailed no risks. Not surprisingly, it was ineffective. However, it did dovetail with Hoover’s opposition to war and reflected his independent internationalism. Finally, Hoover’s opposition to war led him to renounce the imperial implications of the Roosevelt-Wilson vision of the world. Hoover noted that “a large part of the world had come to believe they were in the presence of the birth of a new imperial power [the United States] intent upon dominating the destinies and freedom of other people.” He publicly and unequivocally renounced any such intention and “absolutely disapproved” of the idea that the United States should presume to play Big Brother in the Western Hemisphere. He rejected the illusions of Roosevelt and Wilson that the United States could reform, set right, and police the world.44 Again his consistency emerges: avoiding military interventionism reflected both his idealism about war and his belief in economy. * * * Hoover’s success with the opposition-to-war component of his philosophy was slightly less evident in the area of economy. The geographical limitations he placed on American naval dominance, coupled with his recognition of Japanese and British spheres of influence, enabled him to keep military costs at a reasonable level. He failed in his efforts to reduce international arms expenditures through multinational agreement, though the London Conference did slow the naval construction race temporarily. In the end, it was the Depression that forced economies in the American defense budget; Hoover himself had been unable to achieve reductions. By narrowly defining the scope of national defense, however, Hoover was able to provide security economically. Hoover was profoundly influenced by the Depression. The economic collapse dominated all areas of government during his term and caused reductions in military spending that Hoover had been unable to effect previously. Growing out of the economic difficulties were both Japanese aggression and the seeds of unwillingness to respond positively in the democracies. As early as July 1930, Hoover had ordered the War Department to reduce expenditures below the level of appropriations. When the Manchurian incident occurred fourteen months later, the Depression had deepened and to Hoover it was economically inconceivable to make a military response or even to expend the necessary funds to make such action possible. Economic factors also offer a partial explanation of the democracies’ reluctance to impose sanctions on Japan; with international trade reduced to a fraction of its 1929 levels, no leader could seriously consider voluntarily cutting off trade with Japan, especially when such action could lead to war and even greater financial sacrifice. Hoover’s position was not surprising in light of his belief, derived from his experiences in the First World War, that a “war for democracy” was self-defeating.45 * * * On the question of preparedness, the years since Hoover’s presidency have done a great

deal to vindicate his views. When Japan invaded China in 1931, Hoover proclaimed that the future of China was the responsibility of the Chinese;46 China was not an American responsibility and could not be. Yet he accurately prophesied that Japan would be unable to subdue China, that in the long run that populous nation would endure. After the United States had in essence provoked (and then won) World War II in the Pacific by demanding a Japanese retreat from China, the Communists won the Chinese Civil War, the Japanese became American allies, and American policy makers were forced to negotiate an Orwellian switch to explain who the “good guys” were in the Far East. Adolph Hitler just assumed power a month or so before Hoover left office, so the President never had to make any official response to ensuing German aggression. Based on his remarks as a private citizen, however, one may presume that Hoover would not have seen fit to fight Hitler, especially if there was a chance that Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia might destroy each other. Though he saw communism as the enemy, Hoover never risked nor advocated war with the Soviet Union. In the tradition of the Puritans, with their vision of a city on a hill providing a beacon for the world, Hoover believed that in time the success of the American free enterprise economy would win over the Russians. Preparedness in such a philosophical struggle called for channeling the nation’s money and energy into productive economic pursuits, a Hoover strong point, rather than into military spending. In conclusion, then, Hoover’s military policy, perhaps best dubbed economical preparedness through independent internationalism, depended on the force of a strong economy and the power of world moral opinion. His ideas remained remarkably consistent from WWI through the Cold War while official government policy fluctuated wildly. As Selig Adler concluded so appropriately in 1973, Hoover’s consistency and restraint offer an example of “a foreign policy which appears enticing as the United States gropes once more for a sensible mean between a barren isolationism and an exaggerated concern for minor convulsions.”47 NOTES 1. Gary Dean Best, “Totalitarianism or Peace: Herbert Hoover and the Road to War, 1939-1941,” The Annals of Iowa (1979): 517. 2. Ibid., 516. 3. David Burner, Herbert Hoover: A Public Life (New York, 1979), p. 296. 4. John R. M. Wilson, “Herbert Hoover and the Armed Forces: A Study of Presidential Attitudes and Policy” (Ph.D. diss., Northwestern University, 1971), p. 13. 5. Oswald G. Villard, “The Pot and the Kettle: Roosevelt and Hoover Militarists Both,” The Nation (October 26, 1932): 390. 6. Moseley, “One Soldier’s Journey,” unpublished ms., Moseley Papers, LC. 7. Burner, Herbert Hoover, p. 296. 8. Hoover speeches, November 8, 1930, May 23, 1931, WPD 3513, RG 165, National Archives. 9. Roy L. Wilbur and Arthur M. Hyde, The Hoover Policies (New York, 1937), p. 577. 10. Joan Hoff-Wilson, “A Reevaluation of Herbert Hoover’s Foreign Policy,” in Martin L. Fausold, ed., The Hoover Presidency: A Reappraisal (Albany, 1974), p. 169. 11. Joan Hoff-Wilson, Herbert Hoover: Forgotten Progressive (Boston, 1975), pp. 8-9; Wilson, “Hoover and the Armed Forces,” pp. 14ff. 12. Herbert Hoover, Memoirs (New York, 1951), II, p. 357. 13. Wilson, “Hoover and the Armed Forces,” pp. 196-198.

14. Gerald E. Wheeler, Admiral William Veazie Pratt, U. S. Navy: A Sailor’s Life (Washington, 1974), p. 321. 15. Wilson, “Hoover and the Armed Forces,” pp. 176-178. 16. Robert Ferrell, American Diplomacy in the Great Depression (New Haven, 1957), pp. 102-103; William Starr Myers, The State Papers and Other Public Writings of Herbert Hoover (Garden City, N. Y., 1934), I, pp. 231-233, 236. 17. Burner, Herbert Hoover, p. 287. 18. Ibid., pp. 285-286. 19. Walter LaFeber, Inevitable Revolutions: The United States in Central America (New York, 1984), p. 69. 20. Wilson, “Hoover and the Armed Forces,” pp. 18-20. 21. William A. Williams, Empire as a Way of Life (New York, 1982), p. 151. 22. Wilson, “Hoover and the Armed Forces,” p. 175. 23. Hoff-Wilson, Herbert Hoover, p. 199. 24. Best, “Totalitarianism or Peace,” p. 518. 25. Ibid., p. 523. 26. Hoff-Wilson, “A Reevaluation of Hoover’s Foreign Policy,” p. 183. 27. Selig Adler, “Hoover’s Foreign Policy and the New Left,” in Martin L. Fausold, ed., The Hoover Presidency: A Reappraisal (Albany, 1974), p. 159. 28. Hoff-Wilson, Herbert Hoover, p. 207. 29. Burner, Herbert Hoover, p. 405. 30. Ibid., p. 295. 31. Adler, “Hoover’s Foreign Policy and the New Left,” pp. 161-162. 32. Wheeler, Admiral William Veazie Pratt, p. 318. 33. Wilson, “Hoover and the Armed Forces,” p. 226; George Caspar Homans, “Sailing with Uncle Charlie,” Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society (1964), p. 65. 34. Hoover to Richard W. O’Neill, Jan. 19, 1950, General Douglas MacArthur, PPI File, HHPL. 35. Robert Allen and Drew Pearson, Washington Merry-Go-Round (New York, 1931), p. 22. 36. Hoover to Mrs. Pratt, 26 Nov. 1957, Feb. 21, 1960, Admiral William Pratt, PPI File, HHPL. 37. Archibald D. Turnbull and Clifford L. Lord, History of United States Naval Aviation (New Haven, 1949), p. 272. 38. D. Clayton James, The Years of MacArthur (Boston, 1970), I, pp. 379-380. 39. Donald J. Lisio, “A Blunder Becomes Catastrophe: Hoover, the Legion, and the Bonus Army,” Wisconsin Magazine of History (Autumn 1967), pp. 42-43. 40. John R. M. Wilson, “The Quaker and the Sword: Herbert Hoover’s Relations with the Military,” Military Affairs (April 1974): 41. 41. Hoover, Memoirs, III, p. 230. 42. Wilson, “Hoover and the Armed Forces,” p. 3. 43. Ibid., pp. 224-225. 44. Williams, Empire As a Way of Life, pp. 153-155. 45. Wilson, “The Quaker and the Sword,” p. 47. 46. Williams, Empire As a Way of Life, p. 155. 47. Adler, “Hoover’s Foreign Policy and the New Left,” p. 163.

7

Blessed Are the Peacemakers: The Hoover-Gibson Collaboration

Susan Estabrook Kennedy

Between 1942 and 1945, after an association of more than a quarter century, former President Herbert Hoover and former Ambassador Hugh Gibson wrote two books, several condensations and series of articles, and made speeches across the country and on radio on behalf of a new method of peacemaking, one they hoped would produce a better postwar world than that which followed the Great War.1 Although it was unlike Hoover to have a writing partner, it is not surprising that he and Gibson should collaborate on such a project. They thought alike on the subject, shared experience as well as political philosophy, and believed in the necessity of influencing public policy in a war which both thought was detrimental to United States interests. The collaboration is an interesting one—for the partners, for their position in public discourse, and for their ideas about peacemaking. The two men had many things in common. And their careers intersected at critical junctures. Hoover grew up in modest circumstances, struggled to obtain an education and make his way in the world, but achieved eminence and affluence as an engineer, a financier, and a humanitarian far beyond what anyone might have predicted for a boy born in West Branch, Iowa in 1874 and orphaned before the age of ten. After the pinnacle of his career, the presidency of the United States, Hoover found himself in the unique position of having informed creative ideas about the critical events of history, but challenged by how he might convey those solutions in ways the public would hear and accept. For two years after his presidency, Hoover had kept silent. But, in 1935, he began calling attention to the dichotomy between Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal and traditional liberal constitutionals. After visiting Europe in 1938 and meeting Adolph Hitler, he added foreign affairs to his discussions and worked tirelessly to prevent formal participation by the United States in war that broke out in Europe in 1939. Frustrated by his inability to bring food relief to the “small democracies” of Poland, Finland, Belgium, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, and Norway, and by what he saw as dangerous war-mongering in Washington, he quietly but unsuccessfully sought the 1940 Republican presidential nomination, hoping that, if he won back the White House, the United States could become both the source of humanitarian relief for the victims of war and an unemotional influence in solving the geopolitical issues that enmeshed Europeans. Moreover, he feared that, if the United States declared war, it could only win by reorganizing domestic production along fascist lines. Hoover’s collaborator Hugh Gibson was born in 1883 into somewhat more secure circumstances, as the son of a Los Angeles bank cashier.2 Like Hoover, he prepared for his profession by formal education. Gibson was this country’s first formally-trained diplomat, having earned a diploma from the Ecole Libre des Sciences Politique in Paris. He began his State Department career in Honduras, and moved on to London, Havana, and Brussels. There, in 1914, he met and worked with Herbert Hoover on the Commission for the Relief of Belgium,3 the start of a lifetime friendship and collaboration. Recalling their association fortyfive years later, Hoover called Gibson “a good American” who “plunged into every problem with great sense, . . . a superlative wit, . . . [and] a sunny soul, cheerful amid the greatest discouragement.”4 Later, in Paris, Gibson worked with Hoover during the Versailles conference5—an association that would have profound impact on their peace strategies during World War II—

and again in the American Relief Administration.6 As Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary to newly independent Poland from 1919 to 1924, Gibson continued relief activities and also worked to facilitate American technical assistance in agriculture and industry to help Poland create an economy strong enough to sustain its democratic form of government.7 Gibson’s career continued under Republican presidents who appointed him Minister to Switzerland from 1924 to 1927 and Ambassador to Belgium and Minister to Luxembourg from 1927 to 1933. As President, Hoover tried unsuccessfully to recruit Gibson as his Secretary of State, but he did use his old ally in another role.8 In his Memoirs, Hoover speaks of his “reorganization of our foreign service,” citing his appointment of “career men” to ambassadorships and noting that he “established the idea of an ‘Ambassador at Large’ in Europe for special purposes by appointing Hugh Gibson, Ambassador to Belgium, to such work.”9 Gibson remained in the Foreign Service for five more years after the Hoover administration. As Ambassador to Brazil, he negotiated the end of the Chaco War between Bolivia and Paraguay,10 and then briefly headed the Belgian embassy and Luxembourg ministry11 before retiring from government service in 1938. When war broke out in Europe, Gibson became Hoover’s agent in London in the struggle to persuade Winston Churchill to allow food through the British blockade to the “small democracies.”12 They failed in this, just as Hoover and others failed in their efforts to keep the United States out of war. When Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, Herbert Hoover relegated that debate to “be threshed out by history,” and called for “unity,” “full support for the President,” and “victory.”13 But he and Gibson had already given considerable thought to how the war ought to be concluded. Nearly a month before Pearl Harbor, they had begun conversations and even drafts of the proposals that would become the basis for The Problems of Lasting Peace. Scattered first drafts are dated November 10-30 and throughout December 1941. Characteristically, Hoover wrote first in longhand, then edited a typed copy, but preferred to review his work as it would appear in print. Starting on January 3, 1942, therefore, he and Gibson worked from a sequence of type-set “editions.” There would be nineteen such iterations before page galleys were done on May 7, 1942. Much of the language originated with Hoover, although Gibson drafted a “Handbook on Peace Making” during January.14 Their working relationship was intense. Hoover’s calendar for the six months during which the book was crafted shows frequent, at times daily, contact with Gibson whose absences from town, and his returns, were duly noted by Hoover’s staff. Usually they began with breakfast and presumably worked through the morning. Often they shared lunch and many times had dinner together, sometimes including those who were reading portions of the manuscript.15 When Lou Henry Hoover was in New York, she joined them; Inez Gibson did not. By Christmas, Hoover was so absorbed by the book that he refused to pay attention to his own finances. After Lou Henry left for California in January, Gibson often stayed the night in her room at Hoover’s Waldorf apartment.16 When Hoover went to California in April to rest, fish, and work on the manuscript in its final stages, Gibson accompanied him.17 Not surprisingly, the writing did not always go smoothly. The two authors had very different styles and Hoover, in particular, prided himself on always creating his own texts. He solicited comments from friends about content, but rarely did he respond favorably to

suggestions that he alter the way he expressed himself.18 But Hoover and Gibson clearly agreed on the principles they wanted to express, and the other readers served more to reinforce and round out their thinking than to challenge either their philosophy or central concepts. The earliest readers included Perrin Galpin, longtime comrade in relief work; John Callan O’Laughlin, editor of the Army-Navy Journal and source of much insider information from Washington, D.C.; Stanford professor Edgar E. Robinson; and columnist George Sokolsky. Subsequently, old friend and Hoover biographer Will Irwin read the twelfth “edition,” as did Eve Garrette who negotiated its publication, and Charles Evans Hughes who agreed with its contents but declined to endorse it publicly.19 Dare Stark McMullin, daughter of Hoover’s old mining partner, did research, checked facts, and read proofs.20 Some friends who reviewed the text and offered comments, had their own related ideas. Felix Morley wrote “For What Are We Fighting?” which appeared in the Saturday Evening Post in April. Morley favored regional organizations over a centralized body like the League of Nations so that local problems could be solved closer to home.21 Justice Harlan Fiske Stone told Hoover that he found the text “historically sound” and agreed with its conclusions, but he was of two minds about immediate publication. The analysis “should be issued long enough in advance of peace so that people could be thinking about these problems which it discusses,” he said; but “if it is put out at a time when popular attention is diverted by the bad news which I think we are likely to get, certainly for some time to come, it will not receive the attention which it deserves.” Writing to Hoover in April, he thought the picture would be clearer in another month or six weeks.22 As the book evolved, Hoover prepared the public for its appearance. In a speech to the executives and supporters of the Boys’ Clubs of America, he said that nations can be defeated only by invading armies or starvation from blockade; but neither of those could happen to the United States. However, the task at hand was more than defense of the nation, he continued. We must prepare for lasting peace.23 In November 1941, the Saturday Evening Post published a series of articles that Hoover had drafted in 1934 and 1935 that focused on the disappointments of 1918-191924 and were intended as part of Hoover’s efforts to keep the United States out of the war. The articles were reprinted as a small book which did not appear until January 1942, under the title America’s First Crusade.25 Reviewers criticized its timing as much as its arguments.26 But America’s First Crusade shows precisely the evolution of Hoover’s thinking as another war offered an opportunity to avoid the mistakes of the recent past. And public response to America’s First Crusade also taught Hoover some valuable lessons about propagating his ideas. By the spring of 1942, Hoover and Gibson had a penultimate text. Resisting suggestions that they work with a university press,27 they arranged publication by Doubleday, Doran, and secured a generous subsidy from the Hoover Institution to keep the price down to $2.00. The Book-of-the-Month Club ordered 2,500 copies. Reader’s Digest agreed to publish a condensation, guaranteeing exposure to more than five million readers. Plans developed for an extensive summer advertising campaign, financed by Jeremiah Milbank and the Children’s Fund.28 As a pioneer in public relations a generation earlier,29 Hoover understood the benefits of

substantial advance publicity. Of the sixty-three persons who saw drafts or proofs, all but three urged immediate publication; thirty sent “remarks” for publication; another twenty-one columnists, commentators, and writers agreed to say something about the book when it appeared. While he welcomed and elicited endorsements, Hoover worried that “we will have a battle with the Left-wingers and the nuts.”30 Hoover and Alf Landon had become allies in the effort to prevent American entry into the war. Now, Hoover asked Landon to commend The Problems of Lasting Peace to counter negative reactions from interventionists like Wendell Willkie’s friends at Freedom House and critics on the Left.31 Hoover even suggested that Landon change the language in one of his own speeches; he did not like a message that it was impossible to discuss details of peace at that time. Hoover wanted Landon to urge “preparedness for peace-making and a clarification of our war aims.”32 Doubleday issued The Problems of Lasting Peace on June 12, 1942, the day Japan landed on the American island of Attu in the Aleutians, marking the furthest limit of Japan’s Pacific expansion. The book represented a meticulously argued combination of theory, history, and practicality. First laying out their reasons for entering the discussion, Hoover and Gibson then discussed what they saw as the “dynamic forces” operating through more than three centuries but especially in the past two-and-a-half decades that influenced whether humankind opted for war or for peace. Finally, they outlined principles that could, in their view, lead to a “lasting peace” built on firm foundations. An unprepared-for peace-making was fraught with peril, they argued, pointing to the naïve idealism of 1919. Peace plans should be made before exhausted and starving nations cried out for undue haste in demobilization of armies, navies, and war industries. Political stability cannot be founded, boundaries settled, armies demobilized, peaceful production started, hunger ended, reconstruction begun until peace is proclaimed.” Moreover, they said, details of such momentous issues should be worked out before they are brought to the conference table.33 Recognizing that World War II was also wrapped in the rhetoric of idealistic goals, they pressed for more practical analysis. War aims, they said, were like the Declaration of Independence, whereas peace treaties might be compared with the United States Constitution. It would have been difficult for the Founding Fathers to govern under the terms of the former without the mechanisms of the latter.34 Certainly, victory was the first essential. But victory must lead to lasting peace, anchored in realistic learning from human history, sound “machinery for international co-operation,” and “a larger framework than Americans previously envisioned.”35 Hoover and Gibson urged citizens and policy-makers to consider how history had played out within the context of what they called the seven “dynamic forces” that make for peace and war: ideologies; economic pressures; nationalism; militarism; imperialism; the complexes of fear, hate, and revenge; and the will to peace. With the exception of “the will to peace,” they saw all of the other factors as double-edged swords contributing to both pacific and warlike inclinations, although the violent edge tended to be the keener in their descriptions. Ideologies, whether religious, social, economic, political, artistic, or scientific “are the determining factors of civilization,” according to Hoover and Gibson, because they “contain a

militant crusading spirit” and “within them is inherent aggressiveness.” Recent ideologies— Communism, Fascism, Nazism—were then “on the warpath,” although an ideology such as Christianity was “unique among religious faiths in its preaching of peace and compassion.” Even “personal liberty and representative government” both worked for peace and, occasionally, sought “to impose their beliefs with the sword.”36 Economic forces (which they distinguished from economic determinism) included the need for food and a living, pressures of overpopulation to find outlets for men and goods, “cravings” for secure supplies “of raw materials and places to sell surplus products.” These elements might be neutral in themselves, but recent experience had shown them to be “among the primary causes of the collapse of the world into this second World War.”37 Nationalism, they said, “developed from the deepest of primitive instincts and emotional forces in mankind.” They spoke of “racial instincts and mores” (using the term “race” in its 1940s framework, with heavy overtones of “national character.”) While they praised love of family and of country as well as “the eternal yearning for independence from foreign subjugation or domination,” they worried about dangerous forms of “greed in exploitation of the resources and foreign trade of other peoples and in aggression which quickly turns into imperialism.”38 Militarism they ascribed to man’s being “a combative animal” who “loves contest” and “hates easily.” Egoism runs rampant and “beliefs in superiority are quickly transformed into arrogance.” While common defense of family, tribe, and nation is reasonable, military organization can easily turn to aggression. Hoover and Gibson identified certain nations like China as historically peaceful and other “races” such as Germany, particularly Prussia, and Japan, as having “a definite aggressive warrior strain.” And, they added, one “must not overlook the Pied Pipers” of history who, “consumed with ambition . . . call their countrymen to glory and conquest.”39 Imperialism they defined as “the movement of races over their racial borders.” It “springs from excessive nationalism, militarism, thirst for power, and economic pressures.” While expansion into unoccupied areas could be “justified by modern moral standards,” expansions into areas of uncivilized races and conquest of civilized peoples: “to secure superior living by exploiting other races and their resources” have “no justification in morals or hope of peace.”40 Fear engenders hate and revenge. They saw “fear of invasion, fear of starvation by blockade in war, fear of economic disadvantage; age-old hates” and rivalries as sources of “constant agitation.” The two veterans of Versailles grimly concluded: “The defeated are always humiliated. They are always impoverished.”41 “The will to peace” always stood on the other side of the equation. Men know the sufferings of war, its “poverty and moral degeneration” visited on “victor and vanquished alike.” Referring to the Sermon on the Mount, Hoover and Gibson invoked the “transcendent concept of compassion, of peace and good will among men as a fundamental of the Christian faith.” They saw the epitome of “mankind’s noblest hope” in “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God.” And they counted among the forces for peace embassies and legations, the Holy Alliance, the Concert of Europe, the balance of power, the

Hague Tribunal, negotiation, mediation, arbitration, the League of Nations, and the World Court.42 Hoover and Gibson added another element, although they did not count it in the essential seven dynamic forces. Leaders might be statesmen of “ability, character, courage, and vision” or they could be “men of ignorance, incompetence, consuming vanity, egotism, ambition, or corruption.” But they believed that their “seven dynamic forces” transcended the influence of individuals,43 an interesting commentary in an era personified by Stalin, Mussolini, Hitler, Roosevelt, and Churchill. As The Problems of Lasting Peace reviewed the history of world crises and attempts at preserving peace, Hoover and Gibson displayed remarkable erudition. Their illustrations range from the Pax Romana through the Peace of God and Truce of God to keep certain seasons of the liturgical year free of personal warfare, to mediaeval proposals such as Gerohus of Regensburg’s idea that the Pope should forbid all war and Pierre Dubois’s proposals for a “federation of Christian sovereign states . . . to arbitrate quarrels.” They cited Dante, Henry of Navarre, Emeric Cruce, William Penn, the Abbe de Saint-Pierre, Jean Jacques Rousseau, Jeremy Bentham, and Immanuel Kant as advocates of arbitration, the rule of international law, and the raising of the discussion of war and peace above politics and into the realm of ethics and social conscience.44 In looking at the 140 years from the American and French Revolutions to the beginning of World War I, they found that their seven dynamic forces increased in intensity. Interest in concepts of personal liberty and representative government rose. But “the economic machine became infinitely more complicated and delicately balanced.” Ideologies such as Marxism “infected liberty by introducing government into the operation of and dictation of economic life.” Some twenty-seven new nations emerged but many parts of Europe had mixed populations and peoples were separated from their homelands. “Europe became a network of military alliances glaring at one another.” Nations embraced “a combined hate-fear-andrevenge complex” against one another.45 On the other hand, the Holy Alliance, the Quadruple Alliance, the balance of power, the Concert of Europe, the Monroe Doctrine, the development of law and international cooperation, the Pan American Union, the Hague conferences and various other meetings and agreements seemed to be moving nations toward “the establishment of international rules and law by agreement and precedent,” settlement of disputes “by arbitration and cooling off,” and “cooperation in economic and social fields.” Yet, on balance, they found that “the use of military force, or threats of its use to keep the peace, dominantly prevailed at least in practice.” And the seven dynamic forces “culminated in a gigantic crisis by 1914.”46 With the First World War, they said, those forces underwent dire changes. Total war, starvation as a weapon of war, the new ideology of fascism in which “representative government everywhere surrendered economic and personal freedom to the state that they might win the war,” corruption of intellectual and spiritual freedom through governmentorganized propaganda, the “hideous brutalities” which gave rise to “total hate and total demand for revenge” created extreme conditions and attitudes perilously at odds with any chance for a rational, negotiated, lasting peace.47 When peace was being made, it was blighted

by age-old hates, old-style diplomacy, and inadequate statesmanship. Hoover and Gibson told their readers that “the cornerstone of lasting peace after Versailles was not the League of Nations. The real hope lay in representative government.” Yet German humiliation, the food blockade even after the armistice, absurd indemnities and reparations, and fragmentation of populations undermined chances for representative government and economic recovery to take hold. Even self-determination fueled nationalisms. Imperialism was reborn in the mandate system. Disarmament of the defeated failed to destroy the “old warrior caste.” And statesmen labored under the weight of their constituents’ fears, hatreds, and desires for revenge. Despite Woodrow Wilson’s representation of “the best ideals of America” and his “significant fight for them,” pernicious forces carried the day.48 Those same forces “moved in confusion and in violence” in the twenty years between the world wars, to produce “the swiftest and most explosive revolution in the whole history of Western civilization,” Hoover and Gibson said. The rise of militant Communism and Fascism brought “revolt from the spirit of Liberalism” and a new imperialism of ideologies. “Managed economies” undermined free economic systems and legislative deliberation. A “decline and fall of civilization” was symbolized by the failures of the League of Nations and other efforts to preserve a fragile peace in the face of fierce national attitudes, most notably France’s fear of Germany, rebuffs of Italy, and inconstancy toward Britain.49 The machinery and purposes of the League of Nations produced a few successes, including settlement of some disputes and cooperation among nations on social welfare issues such as labor and public health. But power diplomacy interfered with reconstruction, disarmament, revision of onerous treaties, and issues of jurisdiction.50 Hoover and Gibson did not believe that United States membership in the League would have made a difference in the face of British and French militarism. Nor could “all the other destruction forces set in motion by the treaty and nations acting outside the League . . . be controlled by the United States.”51 There were some evidences of the will to peace in the 1920s and 1930s, notably the International Labor Office, the Washington Conference of 1921-22, the London Naval Conference of 1930, the Permanent Court of International Justice, the Locarno Treaties, the Kellogg-Briand Pact, the idea of a “United States of Europe,” and several dozen other actions which Hoover and Gibson listed in an appendix. But these could not prevail against “the forces leading to the word explosion of 1939.”52 How then, might history be prevented from repeating itself? Hoover and Gibson cautioned that they were not “proposing a plan for peace” but were pointing out the lessons of experience. They drew fifty conclusions which can be grouped in half-a-dozen categories.53 First, war aims and peace principles must be concrete. Peace must rest on firm foundations of political, territorial, military, economic, and ideological settlements, and must have “some instrumentality to preserve it.” Second, personal freedom and representative government, supported by mores rather than machine guns, must be nurtured in vanquished as well as in victorious nations. Third, economic freedom supports political liberty, and economic degradation, such as a food blockade, only sows the seeds of future conflict. The victors “must bear the burdens of shipping, credit, and distribution of supplies” during the period of recovery, but governments

remaining unnecessarily in the economic sphere create situations “alive with international friction and threats to peace.” Governments should be limited to actions that work for international equilibrium, such as in storage of excess raw materials or stabilizing currencies. Special trade agreements, quotas, monopolies, and cartels should be abolished and prohibited. Tariffs should be “equal to all nations” and “no higher than will preserve free competition of imports with domestic production.” Ample raw materials are available to nations that produce goods to exchange for them, and who do not waste “materials and labor in making arms and munitions.” Immigration should be directed toward undeveloped countries. Fourth, small nations deserve independence, but should not secure it by military build-ups. Fragmented ethnic and national groups should be moved to natural homelands rather than risk the irredentist problems of mixed populations. Germany should not be dismembered. Some areas would be better off under international government than subject to resurgent imperialism. Fifth, “disarmament offers the only effective way to bring militarism under control.” Defeated enemies should be disarmed but their military establishments should be replaced by a civic constabulary from which former officers and members of the “military caste” must be excluded. Victors, too, should disarm within weeks of the cessation of hostilities. Money spent on arms would be better used for “the recovery of economic life and civilization.” Military air power should exist solely to “stop anyone from going to war.” Sixth, while leaders of nations must be held accountable for their crimes, “nations cannot be held in chains.” The “decent elements in a people” must be given “a chance to co-operate in the work of peace.” Reparations and loans are counter-productive to peace. “We can have peace or we can have revenge,” the authors said, “but we cannot have both.” Hoover and Gibson reserved their concluding observations for the mechanics of peacemaking and preservation. Decisions should not be made in haste. Some issues could be settled immediately, but others required rational and expert deliberation. Therefore, they called for an immediate “conditional” peace rather than an armistice, followed by “an intermediate period —a breathing spell—for the rebuilding of political life and economic recovery.” The latter would also constitute a “cooling-off period” during which international commissions worked out details. These efforts of experts and professionals would allow thoughtful solutions to critical issues. Peace, they believed, was too important to be crafted at a so-called peace conference by high-ranking politicians swayed by popular pressures. Whatever treaties emerged should be subject to revision as time, circumstances, experience, and wisdom developed. Preservation of peace ought not be the responsibility of an abstract body like the League but the ongoing activity of “heads of state and their foreign ministers more directly in the picture.” Separate continental organizations for the Western Hemisphere, Europe, and Asia should preserve local order. And no nation, certainly not the United States, should have to bear responsibility for policing the world.54 Hoover and Gibson had given their readers much to think about. How would their ideas be received? Reviews were mixed, and Hoover, in particular, followed them carefully. New York’s leading papers included an interesting range of commentary. Orville Prescott gave The Problems of Lasting Peace grudging praise in the New York Times. Suggesting that Hoover “has often said not only the wrong thing but said it at the wrong time,” Prescott granted that Hoover’s long career in public service, World War I relief efforts, and intensive study of

that war “give some weight to his opinions on peacemaking.” Prescott wondered whether Gibson might not be responsible for the “smooth, objective, tactfully restrained tone of this book that in no way mitigates the forthrightness of its judgments.” He concluded that Hoover and Gibson offered a “sane, forceful, stimulating discussion.”55 Two days later, in the same paper, two well-known commentators discussed the book. Arthur Krock mistakenly embraced the idea of a long armistice preceding the making of peace after victory, not the authors’ intent.56 But Anne O’Hare McCormick lauded the volume as “an honest, courageous and comprehensive contribution to a debate that will determine the future of our country and the world.”57 In the New York Herald Tribune, which tended toward the liberal wing of Republicanism, Lewis Gannett dismissed the book with a brief paragraph at the end of his Books and Things column on June 19, casting a mild barb at Hoover’s and Gibson’s contention that nationalism had been a force throughout human history, “which”, said Gannett, “may be news to historians.”58 Two days later, the Tribune ran Mark Sullivan’s much more extensive and positive summation. Sullivan said that, with the expectation that it might soon be necessary to address the problems of peace-making again, Hoover and Gibson had taken on the assignment to “make a careful analysis of all the kinds of peace that man has devised, determine in each case why the peace failed, the causes of the war that followed, and make a report on the whole.” More than most reviewers, Sullivan appreciated the complexity of the equations Hoover and Gibson had outlined, recognizing that the seven dynamic forces are “dualnatured,” sometimes acting for war and under other conditions for peace. Crediting Hoover and Gibson with first-hand observation and experience of the significant events of the past two decades, Sullivan called the book “historical” rather than “autobiographical.” And he added that “the personal participation of two exceptionally intelligent and humane men in the most ambitious attempts at peace ever made, coupled with the scholarly study of all man’s attempts at peace throughout history, give this book a unique value.”59 Felix Morley, William Allen White, William Chenery, George Sokolsky, Charles Gates Dawes, and others—many of whom had read the book in manuscript—praised it in print. But not everyone was friendly, not even every Quaker. Rebecca West, who had earlier castigated Hoover’s attempts to feed victims of the war, wrote a particularly nasty review in The Atlantic nearly a year after publication of The Problems of Lasting Peace. West told her readers that she had received a copy of the book “clothed in a wrapper spectacularly embroidered with testimonials to its merits by persons who ought to have been able to pass a sensible judgment on it.” Those who praised the book, she said, were misled by their assumption that a former President and longtime diplomat “ought to know something about the problems of peace.” The readers, therefore “improvised, as they read, an excellent book on the subject,” not the one that Hoover and Gibson had written. Calling the work “meritless” and Hoover “pretentious,” and its literary style “pidgin English” appropriate to the “dove of peace,” she claimed that, “If a Channel fog wrote history, it would have much the same attitude to time and the sequence of events as Mr. Hoover and Mr. Gibson,” adding that “a Channel fog would presumably be less biased by patriotism.” She not only accused the authors of being incompetent to deal with the topic but guilty of “mindless cynicism,” “bogus scholarship,”

misuse of Woodrow Wilson’s legacy, and blind to the cruelty and greed of mankind.60 But the following month, The Catholic World editorialized against West’s “torrent of insinuations, imputations, moralizings, lamentations, accusations and what not. As for honest presentation of the thesis of Messrs. Hoover and Gibson, of luminous criticism, of logical argument or discussion of historical fact, there is none.”61 When The Problems of Lasting Peace became part of a collection that also included Wendell Willkie’s One World, Henry Wallace’s The Price of Free World Victory, and Sumner Welles’s Blueprint for Peace, published under the title Prefaces to Peace, in 1943,62 Henry Steele Commager praised the goodwill, idealism, and altruism of all four texts but found the collection “almost disconcerting to a generation long trained to cynicism.”63 Nevertheless, Hoover knew better than to rely on reviewers, or to cast his and Gibson’s new configuration for peace-making unassisted into the public debate.64 It might, by accident, be picked up and raised to intense popular discussion and endorsement. Equally possible, it might be castigated by hostile critics or—worse—ignored to death. Publicist James Selvage advised Hoover to broadcast favorable reviews in order to encourage editors to see “the importance of the book,” and to counter the cowardice of “certain weak-kneed people who will be afraid to write anything for fear it may be considered out of step with the national war policy.” Selvage thought that many who did not read the book or form their own opinions “would be willing to re-write people like Mark Sullivan and Miss McCormack.”65 Hoover and Gibson promoted their work selectively on radio. Hoover claimed that he did not want to merely repeat what he had said in print, and he believed that criticisms “from the Left Wingers” should be answered by “a panel of men who approve the ideas in the book.”66 Gibson declined an appearance on the Town Hall meeting,67 but he and Hoover both participated in the “Wake Up, America” radio forum a month after publication, endorsing decisive victory over the Axis but arguing that the ultimate goal must be “durable peace” where people can live in a world of justice, freedom, and security.68 And Gibson substituted for an ailing Lowell Thomas with a carefully orchestrated commentary. As Gibson reported to Hoover, “Having set the straw man up very jauntily, I proceeded to whale the stuffing out of him in the old familiar way.”69 Gibson’s pungent wit showed up again when he sent a note to Hoover in April 1943, saying: “Here also is a letter from a very intelligent man who wants to have three copies of our book given to each of the peace delegates. That rather softens my objection to having a large delegation.”70 The authors did, however, understand the benefits of wide distribution of their ideas. Hoover told an old colleague that he thought the publishers would be willing to sell twentyfive thousand volumes at a reduced price to a foundation for widespread distribution, “after the first flush of sales had gone by.”71 Since Doubleday had already been cooperative on issuing the book at a low price to make its purchase attractive, Hoover did not believe he could depend on the publisher to finance an ambitious advertising campaign. Therefore, various groups associated with Hoover and his activities contributed to promotion of sales.72 The Problems of Lasting Peace remained on the best-seller lists.73 It went through five printings within a month of publication. The tenth printing, on January 15, 1943, was a substantially revised edition, primarily designed to clarify the issue of armistice vs. immediate

conditional peace. And Hoover told William Allen White confidentially that twenty thousand copies were being distributed free to high schools “to give the youngsters some material for debating purposes.”74 Debate was not confined to the schools or to reviewers’ columns. Hoover himself, as well as some biographers and historians tried to assess the short-and long-term impact of Hoover’s and Gibson’s work on peace-makers and the peace process as World War II concluded. Some questioned whether Hoover and Gibson had been heard. In a biography published in the year Hoover died, Eugene Lyons cited many positive reviews, including one that described The Problems of Lasting Peace as “nothing less than a state paper.” But Lyons admitted, “although some twenty government agencies were working on blueprints for the future world order, none of them consulted either Hoover or Gibson.”75 Hoover did talk with Republicans, particularly with newcomers to the Congress after the 1942 elections, but his formal testimony before Congressional committees dealt with efficiency of domestic production and food problems rather than peace-making. In Herbert Hoover: Forgotten Progressive, published in 1975, Joan Hoff Wilson concludes that “the domestic impact of the war remained [Hoover’s] major concern” although the Hoover-Gibson peace books were “the expresident’s most publicly ambitious wartime attempts to influence conditions of peace following World War II.” However, Hoff-Wilson believed that “Most of the specific suggestions made by Hoover and Gibson . . . fell upon deaf ears among policy makers in both parties.”76 She reiterated that phrase when she discussed the work at a 1983 symposium at the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library. “Except for their demand about bringing war criminals to trial, none of the dozen or so major recommendations . . . was carried out before or after the end of World War II.” She pointed out that the Hoover-Gibson “insistence that concrete peace terms had to be worked out before the war ended ran directly into Franklin Roosevelt’s commitment to the principles of unconditional surrender which precluded offering any terms to enemies or friends before the war ended.” And she cited recent accounts of the Yalta conference which indicate that FDR preferred a strategy of postponement in addressing crucial questions.77 Hoff - Wilson ascribed the lack of response to “the lingering negative image” of Hoover as “a callous, depression president and a 1930’s isolationist” as well as the lack of institutional status for former presidents, which she characterized as a waste of “a valuable natural resource.”78 Hoff-Wilson’s interpretation may receive tacit support from the large number of historians of the period who either fail to mention the Hoover-Gibson thesis at all or who cite the work in passing as one of a great many such discussions during and after the war, and the even larger number of general textbooks that conclude their treatment of World War II with the Axis surrenders, never discussing the peace treaties at all. Donald McCoy and Gary Dean Best believe that Hoover and Gibson had more impact. McCoy credits coincidence. While he believes that the book influenced Republicans to support some form of post-war world organization, he concludes that the results followed “largely because the Allies could not agree upon any other course and partly because American policymakers were developing something akin to the Hoover-Gibson theory and were able to persuade their comrades-in-arms to accept some of it.” McCoy rightly notes that “Herbert Hoover was not America’s guiding angel in the development of postwar foreign policy,” but he

grants Hoover a place as “one of many influences that shaped that policy.”79 Best gives more weight to Hoover and Gibson, seeing them working in concert with William Allen White, Senator Harold Burton, and others. In a meticulous study of Hoover’s relationship with the Republican Party from 1932 through 1964, Best details the period from before the publication of The Problems of Lasting Peace through the conference of the Republican Advisory Council at Mackinac Island in September 1943. Republicans at Mackinac failed to adopt a resolution cast in Hoover-Gibson language, “ignored the HooverGibson four-step peacemaking process”, and issued a declaration “largely lacking in content and certainly devoid of anything new.” Best believes, however, that Hoover and Gibson, through their writing and, even more through personal political action and in alliance with William Allen White, Harrison Spangler, and others, substantially influenced “the consensus among Republicans regarding the postwar role the United States should play in an international organization.”80 In some ways, Hoover and Gibson may have had more influence outside than inside their own party. Hoover believed that Sumner Welles purloined several key points in The Problems of Lasting Peace. The publishers had sent out advance copies to some sixty eminent persons. One went to Welles, who delivered two speeches—one in Washington on May 30, ten days after receiving a preview of the Hoover-Gibson book, and the other at Baltimore on June 19, a week after its release. An unsigned, undated memorandum in Hoover’s files compares both the concepts and the language of the Welles statements with the text of The Problems of Lasting Peace, finding some dozen points of conjuncture; it wryly notes another nine points that “it would be advantageous if he would take up.”81 Moreover, in the wake of the Mackinac meeting, Hoover told friends that Franklin Roosevelt, in attempting to steal the Republicans’ thunder, had, in fact called for a provisional peace and a cooling-off transition period—without, of course, giving credit to Hoover and Gibson for the ideas.82 Those principles were incorporated into international policy with the Moscow Declaration. A month before he went to Moscow to confer with British Foreign Minister Anthony Eden and Soviet Foreign Commisar V. M. Molotov, Secretary of State Cordell Hull had privately said that he found the Hoover-Gibson proposal of a transition period “of very great importance.”83 When the three diplomats, plus the Chinese ambassador to the Soviet Union, issued their declaration at the conclusion of the October 1943 conference, they spoke of consultation and collaboration of the four leading powers, of a transition period following surrender, and of the creation of a general international organization recognizing the “principle of sovereign equality of all peace-loving states.”84 A private memorandum in Hoover’s files emphasizes these points and also notes the absence of reference to seven items that Hoover and Gibson would have found troubling: the Atlantic Charter, a long-term military alliance, infringements on sovereignty, proposals of Federal or Union, any general peace conference, any armistice, and words like “enforce” or “police force” or military commitments after the war.85 Hoover was initially concerned that no one seemed to notice the similarities between the Moscow Declaration and The Problems of Lasting Peace, but soon letters began to pour in and Arthur Krock’s article in the New York Times said that the Hoover-Gibson ideas had

“offered the most detailed modus operandi” for the text which, Krock added, was drafted by a committee chaired by Sumner Welles.86 Hoover regularly relegated judgment about his actions and opinions to the verdict of history. Perhaps a look at what actually happened—or did not happen—in peace-making after the war may help to place the Hoover-Gibson proposals in perspective. First, there was no prolonged “armistice” at the end of World War II: Italy, Germany, and Japan surrendered. Second, a peace conference that lasted nearly six months and involved twenty-one nations failed to produce peace treaties. Although diplomats met at Paris from April 25 to May 16, June 15 to July 12, and July 29 to October 15, 1946, negotiations broke down when the Soviet Union objected to the participation of smaller powers. It would take another month, from November 4 to December 12, 1946 for the Council of Foreign Ministers, meeting in New York, to complete peace treaties with Italy, Hungary, Rumania, Bulgaria, and Finland. And the settlements included two major components reminiscent of Versailles. In each case the vanquished had to make reparations, either in kind or in cash, and all had to cede territory. Third, Hoover and Gibson practiced what they preached, trying to solve specific problems. In 1946 they traveled around the world at the behest of President Truman to assess the degree of need and find sources of food to fight postwar famine. Fourth, perhaps Japan offers the best example of definitive end of hostilities, demobilization and demilitarization of the defeated, a “cooling-off period” during which many particular problems were resolved and the nation dramatically transformed, followed by a peace treaty signed by Japan, the United States, and forty-seven other nations (but not the Soviet Union) on September 8, 1951.87 Hoover was in frequent contact with a number of major players in the Japanese situation between 1945 and 1951, including Douglas MacArthur and John Foster Dulles. Herbert Hoover and Hugh Gibson, like many leading thinkers and doers of their generation, hoped, believed, and prayed that they could craft mechanisms for making lasting peace. Hoover and Gibson provided some tools which were adopted either by design or by coincidence by some of the peacemakers. The world did not suffer a third phase of the Great War. Indeed, Germany (in part) and Japan became forces for postwar economic and political stability. Old style racial nationalism seemed quieted for a time. But even before these treaty arrangements were concluded, the world was embroiled in yet another war—undeclared but potentially even more dangerous than the recent conflict. The Cold War, with its profound ideological rifts, and with escalating nuclear capabilities among nations, stretched over nearly half a century, made the so-called “postwar generation” all too familiar with air raid drills, eyeball-to-eyeball confrontations among heads of state, and surrogate wars in third-world countries. Today, we see—with pain—resurgence of the ancient ethnic, religious, ideological, and national rivalries that tore nations and people apart so often in the past. Herbert Hoover and Hugh Gibson would take little pleasure in knowing that their diagnoses of the sources of world’s problems remains valid today. Undoubtedly, they would wish—as we do—that the “will to peace” had gained weight with the passing years. It remains to be seen whether the present generation will have learned and be willing to apply the lessons of history.

NOTES 1. Herbert Hoover and Hugh Gibson, The Problems of Lasting Peace (Garden City, 1942); condensed as The HooverGibson Plan for Making Lasting Peace and New Approaches to Lasting Peace (same publisher); excerpted as “The Problems of Lasting Peace,” Reader’s Digest, (August 1942): 122-42; “Further New Approaches to Lasting Peace,” Collier’s, (June 5, 12, 19, and 26, 1943); Further New Approaches to Lasting Peace by Hoover and Gibson: Articles Appearing in Collier’s May-June 1943 (New York, 1943); “Further New Approaches to Lasting Peace,” in Addresses Upon the American Road, 1941-1945 (New York, 1946), pp. 14-55. Hoover and Gibson, “An Approach to Lasting Peace,” New York Times Magazine April 4, 1943, p. 5; reprinted in Reader’s Digest, (June 1943): 10-12, and in Addresses Upon the American Road, 1941-45, pp. 57-63. Hoover and Gibson, The Basis of Lasting Peace (New York, 1945). Hoover also discussed the peace plan in addresses to the Young Men’s Christian Association in New Haven, Conn on March 28, 1941, the Executives’ Club in Chicago on December 16, 1942, and a joint session of the St. Paul-Minneapolis branches of the Foreign Policy Associate and the University of Minnesota on September 3, 1943. These and other speeches containing the same philosophy and message were reprinted in Addresses Upon the American Road, 1941-1945 and 1945-1948. 2. Not only did Gibson share a California rearing with Hoover, but Iowa origins as well. Hugh’s father, Frank (Francis Asbury) Gibson, was born in Iowa and migrated to southern California. Moreover, the elder Gibson’s career in banking bore some resemblance to that of Lou Henry Hoover’s father. Information on Gibson’s career is drawn from a variety of primary and secondary sources. An extensive collection of Gibson’s papers is held in the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution, and Peace at Stanford University. Supplementary and parallel documents are housed at the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library in West Branch, Iowa. The facts of Gibson’s life and career are summarized in “Hugh Simons Gibson,” by Susan Estabrook Kennedy, in American National Biography, edited by John Garraty (New York, forthcoming). Other biographical sketches include Who Was Who in America (Chicago, 1966) vol. 3 (1951-1960), p. 322; Current Biography 1953, pp. 217-20; Current Biography Yearbook 1955 (New York, 1955), p. 227; International Who’s Who 1952; and The National Cyclopaedia of American Biography (New York, 1930), vol. A, p. 420. Gibson’s unique personality and style can be appreciated in Hugh Gibson, 1883-1954: Extracts from His Letters and Anecdotes from His Friends (New York, 1956). 3. Hugh Gibson, Journal from Our Legation in Belgium (Garden City, N. Y., 1917), also published as La Belgique Pendant la Guerre (Paris, 1918). 4. Herbert Hoover, An American Epic, Vol. I: The Relief of Belgium and Northern France, 1914-1930 (Chicago, 1959), p. 41. Hoover, The Memoirs of Herbert Hoover: Years of Adventure, 1874-1920 (New York, 1950), pp. 152-59. Hoover’s biographer, George Nash, also covers the early years of wartime relief in The Life of Herbert Hoover: The Humanitarian, 1914-1917 (New York, 1988). 5. Hoover, The Ordeal of Woodrow Wilson (New York, 1958). 6. Ibid., p. 171; Hoover, An American Epic, Vol. Ill: Famine in Forty-Five Nations, the Battle on the Front Line, 19141923 (Chicago, 1961), ch. 33. 7. Gibson, Poland: Her Problems and Her Future (New York, 1920); Hoover, American Epic, III, ch. 40; George J. Lerski, Herbert Hoover and Poland: A Documentary History of a Friendship (Stanford, Calif., 1977). In his Foreword to the latter volume, Senator Mark Hatfield particularly points up “the understanding of the human aspects to history of diplomacy and politics” in tracing Hoover’s relationship with Poland, (p. xi). 8. David Burner, Herbert Hoover: A Public Life (New York, 1979), p. 209. Burner speculates that Gibson declined the position for financial reasons. 9. Hoover, The Memoirs of Herbert Hoover: The Cabinet and the Presidency, 1920-1933 (New York, 1952), p. 335. 10. Gibson, Rio (Garden City, N. Y., 1937). 11. Gibson, Belgium (Garden City, N. Y., 1939). 12. Hoover, An American Epic, vol. 4: The Guns Cease Killing and the Saving of Life from Famine Begins, 1939-1963 (Chicago, 1964), ch. 1-13. 13. New York Times, December 8, 1941, 6:5; December 9, 1941, 44:3. 14. The Problems of Lasting Peace, 15 boxes of manuscript and dated typeset drafts, with finding aid, Herbert Hoover Presidential Library (HHPL). 15. Calendar, maintained by Herbert Hoover’s office staff, November 1941 - June 1942, HHPL. 16. Edgar Rickard, Diary, December 23 and 30, 1941, and 1941 Summary, HHPL. 17. Calendar, November 1941 - June 1942, HHPL. 18. Rickard Diary, January 30, 1942. 19. Gibson, who had been Hughes’s personal secretary, requested an endorsement, and Hoover tried to get Mr. Justice Harlan Fiske Stone to persuade him, but to no avail. Hoover to Stone, June 10, 1942, Stone mss, Library of Congress, bx. 17. 20. Manuscript drafts and finding aid, HHPL. 21. Felix Morley, For the Record (South Bend, Ind., 1979), pp. 375-77. 22. Stone to Herbert Hoover, April 15, 1942; Hoover to Stone, June 7, 1942, Post-Presidential Individual Files (PPI)—Stone,

HHPL. 23. New York Times, January 28, 1942, 5:4. 24. Hoover, “The First American Crusade,” Saturday Evening Post, (November 1, 1944): 9ff.; “You May Be Sure I Shall Fight Shy,” Saturday Evening Post, (November 8, 1941): 14ff.; “The Only Nation Since the Crusades That Has Fought the Battles of Other Peoples at Her Own Gigantic Loss,” Saturday Evening Post, (November 15, 1941): 31ff. 25. Hoover, America’s First Crusade (New York, 1942). 26. Typical of the unenthusiastic reviews was one by Ralph Thompson in the New York Times. With the United States fighting on two fronts, he argued, one would expect a former President “to promote and encourage that effort.” Instead, Thompson claimed that he read an account of how “we were cheated, hoodwinked and bamboozled by certain malignant ‘foreign’ powers in 1918 and 1919.” Thompson accused Hoover of intentionally raising the ghost of the America First Committee at a time when win-the-war sentiments were most needed. “Read it and you will see,” Thompson said, “why our only living ex-President has never been celebrated for his tact or his sense of timing.” New York Times, January 12, 1942, 13:2. 27. Rickard Diary, February 25, 1942. 28. Rickard Diary, April 14 and 26, May 2, June 7 and 23, and July 9, 1942. 29. Craig Lloyd examined Hoover’s prowess in public relations techniques in Aggressive Introvert: A Study of Herbert Hoover and Public Relations Management, 1912-1932 (Columbus, Ohio, 1972). 30. Hoover to Stone, June 7, 1942, HHPL:PPI:Stone. 31. Hoover to Landon, June 2, 1942, HHPL:PPI:Landon. 32. Hoover to Landon, June 5, 1942, HHPL:PPI:Landon. 33. Hoover and Gibson, The Problems of Lasting Peace (citations are taken from the 10th printing, January 15, 1943), pp. 23. 34. Ibid., pp. 3-4. 35. Ibid., pp. 5-6. 36. Ibid., p. 12. 37. Ibid., p. 13. 38. Ibid., pp. 13-15. 39. Ibid., pp. 15-17. 40. Ibid., pp. 16-19. 41. Ibid., pp. 19-20. 42. Ibid., pp. 20-21. 43. Ibid., pp. 21-22. 44. Ibid., pp. 23-38. 45. Ibid., pp. 39-59. 46. Ibid., pp. 60-78. 47. Ibid., pp. 81-93. 48. Ibid., pp. 105-24. 49. Ibid., pp. 125-49. 50. Ibid., pp. 150-77. 51. Ibid., pp. 177-79. 52. Ibid., pp. 180-95 and 289-96. 53. Ibid., pp. 199-254. 54. Ibid., pp. 241 and 254-88. When Winston Churchill came out in favor of regional organizations, Hoover and Gibson lauded his agreement with their proposals. New York Times, March 23, 1943, 4:2, and Hoover Gibson, “An Approach to a Lasting Peace,” New York Times Magazine, April 4, 1943, VI:5; condensed in Reader’s Digest, 42 (June 1943): 10-12. 55. New York Times, June 19, 1942, 21:2. 56. New York Times, June 21, 1942, IV:3:1. 57. New York Times, June 21, 1942, VI:1:1. 58. Lewis Gannett, “Mr. Hoover’s Prescriptions for Peace,” New York Herald Tribune, June 19, 1942. Hoover was sufficiently irritated that he wrote to Helen Rogers Reid of his concern that “a journal of such importance to America as the Tribune should maintain a Communist book reviewer engaged in the destruction of books dedicated to the American System and in eulogy of all books of Communist flavor.” He assured Mrs. Reid that “the book is going astonishingly well” and sent her a list of favorable comments. He said that friends telegraphed news “of gorgeous support in the Chicago, Des Moines, St. Louis, Minneapolis and Pacific Coast Press.” The book was in its third printing, he told her—this, a mere week following publication— and “bookstores in the interior are sold out.” Helen Reid replied graciously that she personally disagreed with the Gannett review, but assured Hoover that Gannett was, in fact, a Quaker, with much in common with Hoover, even if he had voted for Democrats or Socialists. She added a coy postscript: “The seven column announcement of your publishers in yesterday’s Times was very impressive but don’t you think it should also reach Herald Tribune readers? I’m afraid you have wished to punish me.” Hoover to Reid, June 24, 1942; Reid to Hoover, July 1, 1942, Reid family manuscripts, Library of Congress, series D, bx. 52,

folder: H. Hoover. 59. Mark Sullivan, “Mr. Hoover’s ‘Dynamic Forces’,” New York Herald Tribune Books, June 21, 1942, p. 2. 60. Rebecca West, “The Hoover Frame of Mind,” The Atlantic, 171 (June 1943): 47-53. 61. “The Hoover Frame of Mind,” The Catholic World, July 1943, pp. 337-45. 62. Prefaces to Peace (New York, 1943). 63. Commager patronizingly noted that “Mr. Willkie is confident that the peoples of Asia can manage their own affairs better than anyone can manage for them; Mr. Hoover seems ready to forgive and forget the history of Germany during the past quarter-century, and reserves such animadversions as he permits himself against wicked militaristic nations like Czechoslovakia; Mr. Wallace is sure that this is the century of the common man; and Mr. Welles submits that all people have a natural right to equal economic enjoyment.” Commager concluded: “We cannot put our faith in economic panaceas or in engineering blueprints —not because they are not essential, but because they cannot be effectively implemented except through politics,” adding, “It is an arresting fact that four men who have played distinguished parts in the political life of the nation should reveal such apparent indifference to this crucially important aspect of the problems of peace.” Commager, “World Planners, Then and Now,” New York Times Book Review, July 18, 1943, VII. 64. Lloyd, Aggressive Introvert. 65. James P. Selvage to Hoover, June 15, 1942, HHPL:PPI:Selvage. 66. Hoover to O. Glenn Saxson, June 12, 1942, HHPL:PPI:Saxson. 67. Gibson to Hoover, August 19, 1942, Gibson mss (Hoover Institution), bx. 45. 68. New York Times, July 13, 1942, 8:2. 69. Gibson to Hoover, August 19, 1942. 70. Gibson to Hoover, April 5, 1943, in Hugh Gibson, 1883-1954, p. 30. 71. Hoover to Saxson, June 12, 1942. 72. Rickard Diary, July 15 and October 6, 1942, January 6, 1943; Hoover to Gibson, July 18, 1942, Gibson mss (Hoover Institution). 73. Rickard Diary, August 18, 1942. 74. Hoover to William Allen White, October 3, 1942, HHPL:PPI:White; Rickard Diary, October 6, 1942. 75. Eugene Lyons, Herbert Hoover: A Biography (Garden City, N.Y., 1964), pp. 371-72. 76. Joan Hoff-Wilson, Herbert Hoover: Forgotten Progressive (Boston, 1975), pp. 249-53. 77. Hoff-Wilson, “The Postwar World According to Hoover,” in The Problems of Lasting Peace Revisited: A Scholarly Conference, November 2, 1983, edited by Thomas T. Thalken (West Branch, Iowa, 1986), pp. 58-61. 78. Hoff-Wilson, “The Postwar World According to Hoover,” excerpted in The American Road 9 (Winter 1989): 5-6. 79. Donald R. McCoy, “Herbert Hoover and Foreign Policy, 1939-1945,” in Congressional Record, Senate, July 23, 1979, S 10400-5; and in Herbert Hoover Reassessed, edited by Mark Hatfield (Washington D.C., 1981), pp. 409-412. 80. Gary Dean Best, Herbert Hoover: The Postpresidential Years, 1933-1964 (Stanford, Calif., 1983), pp. 204-40; Best, “Herbert Hoover and Postwar Foreign Policy, 1942-1945,” in The Problems of Lasting Peace Revisited, pp. 29-49; Best, “The Problems of Lasting Peace: Improving the Odds,” excerpted in The American Road, 9 (Winter 1984): 4-5. 81. “An Interesting Parallel,” HHPL:PPS:Sumner Welles, n,d. At the same time, Hoover made certain distinctions between his and Gibson’s proposals and Welles’s language; writing to Arthur Krock on June 22, 1942, he said that Welles had used the term “armistice” while he and Gibson proposed “instant peace,” and he went on to recount the “total degeneration all over the planet” during the armistice period following the First World War. Hoover to Krock, quoted in Arthur Krock, Memoirs: Sixty Years on the Firing Line (New York, 1968), p. 139. 82. Hoover to John Cowles, September 8, 1943, HHPL:PPI:Cowles; Hoover to William Allen White, September 16, 1943, White mss, Library of Congress, series C, bx. 414; Hoover to Landon, September 20, 1943, HHPL:PPI:Landon. 83. John Callan O’Laughlin to Hoover, September 17 and November 8, 1943, O’Laughlin mss, Library of Congress, and Gibson mss, Hoover Institution. 84. U.S. Department of State, Bulletin, IX: 307ff. 85. “Memorandum on Moscow Declaration,” November 2, 1943, Hoover mss, Hoover Institution. On the same day, Hoover sent portions of the same analysis to a number of associates, e.g. Hoover to Roy Howard, November 2, 1943, HHPL:PPI:Howard; Hoover to Prescott Barrows, November 2, 1943, HHPL:PPI:Barrows; Hoover to Robert A. Taft, November 5, 1943, and Taft to Hoover, November 9, 1943, HHPL:PPI:Taft. 86. New York Times, November 11, 1943, 22:5. 87. The treaty recognized Japan’s “full sovereignty” and called for the withdrawal of occupation forces within ninety days of ratification by a majority of the signatories. Japan recognized the independence of Korea; renounced claims to Formosa, the Kuriles, Sakhalin and Pacific islands formerly under its mandate, and agreed to United Nations trusteeship over the Ryuku and Bonin islands.

8

Herbert Hoover and the Great Debates over Foreign Policy 1940-1941 and 1950-1951

Gary Dean Best

For twenty years Herbert Hoover was the only ex-president of the United States in American life. There is no clearly defined role for former presidents, although there have been various proposals of ways in which their experience might be utilized by the government. In the absence of a defined role, former U.S. presidents have pursued their postpresidential lives in a variety of ways. Most have sought a dignified retirement from public life, surfacing, if at all, only to lend their support to major causes. Few have pursued a public life with the energy that Hoover did. This is surprising, because there was every reason to expect that Hoover would be little heard from once he left Washington in March 1933. Blamed by many for the depression and faulted by many others for not having done more to relieve its misery, Hoover left the White House under a cloud that would have inhibited many men from ever again taking an active public role. Moreover, whereas an open-minded administration in Washington might have sought his multifaceted expertise in domestic and foreign affairs and thus have kept him active in public affairs, the Roosevelt administration ignored him for twelve years after he left the White House, except for unofficial contacts with him during the war years. Even in his own Republican Party organization Hoover was a man with little following. He had never been popular with the party regulars and was anathema to the progressive wing. Everything, then, seemed to militate against his reappearance in public life. For two years, in fact, Hoover did largely withdraw from public life. From his home on the Stanford University campus came few public statements, and these did not take issue with the policies being pursued by the Roosevelt administration. Privately, however, Hoover was in anguish over those policies and his correspondence was filled with denunciations of the direction in which Roosevelt seemed to be taking the United States. Publicly Hoover remained silent, primarily for two reasons. First, since his own policies had been repudiated by the voters, Hoover felt that the Roosevelt administration deserved the chance to test its policies free of the kind of opposition that could lead to charges that the opponents had sabotaged recovery. Hoover believed that in time the policies would fail and the Roosevelt administration would be repudiated. Second, Hoover also felt—wrongly as it turned out—that there was no interest among Americans in what he might have to say on the issues.1 Despite all of the forces working against his reappearance in public life, there was good reason to expect that Hoover would not remain silent or inactive for long. For one thing, he was a restless man who craved activity and was bored by retirement. For another, he desperately sought vindication. Hoover honestly believed that his own policies had turned the tide of the depression in the summer of 1932. He was convinced that continuation of his policies, without the uncertainties introduced by the presidential campaign and election of 1932 and the lack of confidence in the president-elect during the months between his election and his inauguration, would have continued to produce recovery without the alterations in the American system that his successor seemed to be introducing. Roosevelt blamed Hoover for policies that had virtually brought the American economy to a dead stop in the banking crisis that existed on inauguration day; Hoover blamed Roosevelt’s election for having aborted the recovery of the summer of 1932 and Roosevelt, himself, for the deterioration of the situation during the early months of 1933. From this and from the philosophical differences between the two men, it was virtually inevitable that Hoover would at some time go on the attack against Roosevelt’s policies. Once on the attack, Hoover found that his fears that there would not be an

audience willing to listen had been groundless. Hoover possessed numerous and devoted followers who had been attracted to him by his intellect, his humanitarian activities, and his public philosophy. In addition to those who were devoted to Hoover personally, his attacks on the policies of Presidents Roosevelt and Truman appealed particularly to four groups in American life: those who for partisan reasons desired to defeat the Democrats in Washington; those who opposed the changes being made in the American system on philosophical grounds; those who did not oppose the Democratic rule in Washington on political or even philosophical grounds but viewed the New Deal policies, or the manner in which they were carried out, as detrimental to economic recovery; and those who opposed the foreign policies of Roosevelt and Truman as dangerous to the United States. It was Hoover’s appeal to this last group that I shall examine. Hoover had little to say on the subject of foreign policy until international affairs began to loom important in the late 1930s. It should not be surprising that he took an active role in the foreign policy debates because, in addition to the reasons already given, Hoover was in every sense a world figure. Even ignoring his four years as president of the United States, Hoover possessed an expertise concerning foreign lands that was equaled by few inside or outside of the government. Most of his early mining career was spent overseas, and his emergence into public view came as a result of his activities with the American Relief Committee in London in 1914 and his leadership of the Belgian relief effort before the United States entered World War I. During the armistice months of late 1918 and well intol919, Hoover served as the virtual economic czar of much of Europe for the Versailles Peace Conference. Back in the United States in late 1919 and 1920 he was a leading figure in the fight for ratification of the Treaty of Versailles and U.S. entry into the League of Nations. As secretary of commerce under Presidents Harding and Coolidge, he was intimately involved in America’s economic relations with foreign countries. As a result of these experiences, added to his four years at the head of the U.S. government during a trying time in foreign relations, Hoover’s views on foreign policy were well informed. In addition, at the time of the two most important debates over foreign policy—in 1940-1941 and 1950-1951—Hoover possessed recent intimate, first-hand knowledge of the nations concerned and their leaders, derived from travel in those lands and conversations with the heads of governments. His opposition to U.S. participation in World War II came after extensive travel through Europe in 1938, during which he conferred with Hitler and other European leaders.2 He was also well acquainted with the leading figures in Japan, and was visited at his home on the Stanford campus by Matsuoka Yosuke and Konoe Fumimaro.3 These two, as foreign minister and prime minister, respectively, would occupy important positions in the government during the deterioration of relations between the United States and Japan in the late 1930s and early 1940s. Hoover’s later opposition to the stationing of U.S. ground forces in Europe during the 1950-1951 debate came after extensive travels through Europe and Asia on behalf of the Famine Emergency Committee after World War II. To the decades of experience that Hoover possessed in the international arena and to the direct contacts he had with the leaders and conditions of the countries involved must be added his scholarly interest in the causes of war. This led him to establish what was originally the Hoover War Library at Stanford University and to acquire documents from all over the world for its collection.

All of this meant that Hoover was one of the best informed men outside of the government concerning the issues raised in the great debates and that his qualifications rivaled even those within the government. Yet it is true that informed judgments are not necessarily more correct than uninformed or ill-informed ones. It should be kept in mind, too, that Hoover was free of the responsibilities of actual decision-making—responsibilities that might have caused alterations in his views had he been in a position of authority. Nonetheless, Hoover’s qualifications mean that historians would be well advised to give his arguments attention. In looking at these two great debates, I will concentrate primarily on two of Hoover’s speeches, with some elaboration. The first speech is that of June 29, 1941. Since 1938, Hoover had taken a leading role in arousing U.S. public opinion against the policies that he feared were leading the nation to follow once again the 1917 experience of needless and useless involvement in one of Europe’s chronic power struggles.4 In the beginning he advocated American concentration on defense of the Western Hemisphere. He argued that U.S. intervention elsewhere would be only “an attempt to maintain the status quo in national boundaries all over the world,” and to do so would involve the United States in endless conflicts. Moreover, the U.S. record of expansion in North America was far from clean. Hoover predicted: “We cannot become the world’s policeman unless we are prepared to sacrifice millions of American lives—and probably some day see all the world against us. In time they would envisage us as the world’s greatest bully, not as the world’s greatest idealist.” World War I had demonstrated the folly of trying to “make the world safe for democracy.”5 As the situations of Great Britain and China grew more desperate in 1940 and 1941, he favored the extension of aid to those countries.6 He opposed Lend-Lease, however, as an unneutral step reminiscent of those that the United States had followed in 1917. Then, in June 1941, the German military machine turned from its pressure on the British Isles and launched an invasion of the Soviet Union—a move Hoover had predicted in conversations with Secretary of State Cordell Hull because of impressions he had gained in Germany in 1938.7 With the pressure on Great Britain relaxed and Germany launched in mortal combat with another totalitarian dictatorship equally repugnant to many Americans, the principal argument for U.S. interventionist policies seemed to have been removed. Yet to Hoover’s surprise the movement for U.S. intervention gained greater force now that American friends of the Soviet Union were converted from noninterventionists into dedicated interventionists. These new converts to the interventionist cause increased its shrillness and intemperance. For Hoover, Senator Taft, Senator Harry Truman, and others, there was nothing to choose between Nazi Germany and Communist Russia.8 The Soviets, by their nonaggression treaty with Hitler in 1939, had permitted the Germans to launch their invasion of Western Europe, had participated themselves in the rape of Poland, and had invaded Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, and Finland. If totalitarianism was the issue, the Soviet Union was as totalitarian as Nazi Germany; if aggression was the issue, the Soviet Union seemed equally guilty with the Germans. By whatever standard of judgment, the United States did not belong in the war on the side of Stalin any more than it did on the side of Hitler. Senator Taft was the first to make these points in a speech,9 but Hoover followed a few days later with his address of June 29, 1941. He told his audience he found it curious that,

while the German invasion of the Soviet Union had lessened the threat to Great Britain, which all had been concerned about, it had also intensified the “propaganda of fear or hate” designed to force the United States into the war. He recognized that it was sensible for Great Britain to cooperate with the Soviet Union since they were at war against a common enemy, but he argued that the new situation made it clear that U.S. intervention could not be justified as a crusade for freedom against tyranny. In Hoover’s view, U.S. intervention would instead, win for Stalin “the grip of communism on Russia, the enslavement of nations, and more opportunity for it to extend in the world.” Instead, he advocated a policy of “watchful waiting, armed to the teeth, while these men exhaust themselves.” The United States should “give every aid we can to Britain and China within the law, but do not put the American flag or American boys in the zone of war. Arm to the teeth for defense of the Western Hemisphere, and cease to talk and to provoke war.” Instead of seeking to impose freedom on other nations by force, the United States should seek to make an example of itself for the rest of the world. Then, when the warring nations were exhausted from the conflict, the United States, with its own resources unimpaired, could promote a just and permanent peace.10 Thereafter, Hoover continually reiterated the point that U.S. intervention in the war served only to “make the world safe for Stalin.” Hoover was much encouraged by the response to his speech. His office wired him that there had been an “avalanche of enthusiastic comments” and a “flood of requests for copies.” W. K. Kellogg, the cereal king, sent $5,000 to underwrite distribution costs.11 Surveying the reaction, Hoover concluded that the speech had received a greater response than any he had delivered since leaving the White House. According to a close Hoover friend, the former president’s mail indicated that he had turned many minds against intervention.12 Between June 29 and July 9, the Gallup Poll showed an increase in the percentage of those opposed to going to war with Germany and Italy from 75 to 79 percent.13 Through July and August Hoover cooperated with other noninterventionists outside of Congress in putting together and issuing a statement opposing what they called the “step-bystep projection of the United States into undeclared war.” The statement was issued early in August and signed by Hoover, Alfred Landon, Charles Dawes, John L. Lewis, Felix Morley, Robert Hutchins, and a number of other prominent Americans. The statement reiterated Hoover’s position that the United States should concentrate on the defense of the Western Hemisphere, make aid available to the democracies “at our seaboard,” and preserve freedom and democracy in the United States. It also pointed to the changed nature of the war now that Germany had invaded the Soviet Union.14 During the remaining months before the attack on Pearl Harbor, Hoover continued to protest his policies that he saw leading the United States into the war. His task was complicated by the fact that, while public opinion polls continued to show the American people opposed to participation in the war, they also showed support for the very policies of President Roosevelt that Hoover viewed as leading inevitably to intervention. He found also that his subsequent speeches on the subject did not evoke the response of the one on June 29, and that some leading Americans did not take kindly to his position. Hoover wrote one friend late in August that John D. Rockefeller “has cut me off his social list completely and violently

because I do not want to go to war.”15 Nonetheless, he explained to columnist Boake Carter that he intended to “go on making nasty remarks until Congress finally declares war—even though it may be only a confirmation of a declaration of war.”16 He realized that his speeches “had better not be too frequent and must be properly timed.” As he wrote one congressman: You will remember that when we used to boil maple syrup as youngsters and the syrup reached the point at which it was about to crystallize, it would begin to sputter. The old New England custom was to pour in a few drops of cold water and it would calm down. If I can be of that kind of service, I will have reached the only point of usefulness that I care about.17

Hoover’s final attempt to pour a few drops of cold water on the sputtering situation was his speech of November 19. In it he still identified the Soviet Union with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy as an enemy of freedom, and he told his listeners: “We want the end of these evil and brutal ideas of Nazism, Fascism, and Communism.” Hoover asked for assurances from Roosevelt that no U.S. expeditionary forces would be sent overseas without the approval of Congress, and he also called for planning to begin immediately for the peace conference that would follow the end of the war.18 Less than three weeks after this speech the bombs fell on Pearl Harbor and the United States was in the war. I might add, parenthetically, before going on to the other great debate, that the bombs had scarcely fallen before Hoover began to follow his own advice with regard to planning for the peace. In collaboration with Hugh Gibson, Hoover set forth a plan for peacemaking that included U.S. participation in an international organization after the war, and he played a major role in rallying the Republican Party to support American entry into the United Nations. Once World War II ended, Hoover was quickly returned to official public life by President Truman. Subsequently he traveled for the president on behalf of famine relief and then took on duties as chairman of the so-called Hoover Commission in dealing with reorganization of the executive branch of the federal government. In the midst of these latter activities, the United States negotiated the treaty that established NATO in 1949. Preoccupied with the work of the commission and sensitive to the desirability of avoiding controversy while seeking to get the reforms recommended by the commission put into effect through presidential orders and congressional legislation, Hoover was not in the beginning a vocal critic of this gradual evolution of a U.S. commitment to the defense of Europe. By May 1950, however, Hoover was concerned over America’s seeming lack of a foreign policy and the “overstrained” U.S. economy, which, because of the expenditures for the Marshall Plan, military aid to Europe, and America’s own defense spending, made it impossible to give Americans the “services and relief of taxes that they should enjoy.”19 Pointing to the puny military strength of the West European nations in comparison with that of the Soviet Union, Hoover insisted that before the United States appropriated more money to aid their defense, it should find whether they were unwilling to do more to defend themselves.20 Hoover’s concern over the strains on the U.S. economy was heightened in June 1950 when the United States went to the aid of South Korea. That struggle also confirmed him in his suspicions that the United Nations was proving ineffective as a device for preserving the peace and that Western Europe lacked the will to stand with the United States to repel communist

aggression. Hoover calculated that the manpower and industrial capacity of West European nations was greater in 1950 than before, but that they had only one-fifth the army divisions that they had put onto the field for the two world wars. With such numbers a successful ground war could not be fought against the military might of the Soviet Union, he insisted, and the United States must rely on air and sea power to defend itself.21 In a speech in October 1950, Hoover questioned whether the Europeans, outside of Great Britain, had “the will to fight, or even the will to preparedness.” The United States should be willing to provide aid, but “if Western Europeans want defense from the communist tide, they must do most of it themselves—and do it fast.” He expressed opposition to the stationing of ten U.S. combat divisions in Europe, since that could result only in “a slaughter of American boys unless many times that number were standing by their sides. We should say, and at once, that we shall provide no more money until a definitely unified and sufficient European army is in sight. And further that ten American divisions will not be landed until then.”22 Hoover’s major speech of the great debate in 1950-1951 was on December 20 and was nationally broadcast. He regarded it as one of the most important addresses of his life, ranking with the June 29, 1941, speech discussed above. As he wrote to Raymond Moley and others: In an “emergency” on June 29, 1941, I made an appraisal of the forces moving in the world. I advised arming to the teeth and a policy of watchful waiting before we committed ourselves. I pointed out the obvious disaster if we jumped in. I was to be proved right after infinite losses to our country.23

The speech he was to give in December, he predicted, was “likely to be no more welcome than the one ten years ago.”24 He wrote to Senator Robert Taft that he did not “expect our Eastern seaboard press to be any more enthusiastic about this” speech than they had been about the one in 1941.25 The speech in 1950, delivered as U.S. forces reeled back in disarray in Korea before the onslaught of Chinese Communist “volunteers,” began with a survey of the imbalance in military forces between the communist and the free world. From this Hoover reiterated his conclusion that there existed no possibility of victory in a land war against the Soviet Union and its satellites. Moreover, the U.S. economy was already strained to its limit. As he had in the first great debate, Hoover advocated American concentration on the defense of what he called the “Western Hemisphere Gibraltar of Western Civilization,” but also, through the use of air and sea power, the defense of the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, with Great Britain as the frontier of American defense in the Atlantic and with Japan, Taiwan, and the Philippines as the American frontier in the Pacific. This meant that the United States should build powerful air and sea forces rather than maintain a large army. Not only was this the only feasible means of defense against the enormous communist ground armies, it was also less expensive. After the initial large outlay for planes and ships, the United States would be able to cut military expenditures, balance the budget, and free itself “from the dangers of inflation and economic degeneration.” Economically strong, the United States could then continue to feed the hungry of the world and assist other countries in arming themselves for defense against communism. However, before the United States extended any further military aid to Europe, those nations must demonstrate their own determination to

defend themselves by organizing and equipping combat divisions in sufficient numbers to “erect a sure dam against the red flood.” That must be done before the United States landed “another man or another dollar on their shores.” To do otherwise would only encourage another Korea, and that “would be a calamity to Europe as well as to us.” The U.S. policy toward Europe should “be confined to a period of watchful waiting.” His policy was not isolationism, Hoover argued, but just the opposite.26 Hoover’s office reported a “tremendous, favorable response” after the speech, with the telephone ringing continually and a flood of telegrams that began even before Hoover had returned to the office from delivering it. Not one message received was unfavorable.27 A check through the Congressional Record for a comparison of congressional comment on the 1950 speech with that in 1941 found that there had been little comment over the earlier speech by contrast with the amount of attention the more recent speech was receiving in the Record.28 Hoover was confident that his position would arouse support among American public opinion. He wrote to Senator H. Alexander Smith that he suspected “Congress is going to get a jolt of public opinion such as it has not seen for a long time!”29 Hoover was not far wrong, as members of Congress were inundated with mail and wires in support of his doctrines. Senator Richard Nixon wrote him that he had “already received over 100 wires this morning indicating enthusiastic approval of your speech last night.” Nixon added that he was sure Hoover’s comments would “have an excellent effect in developing a more realistic approach to the critical problems we face today.”30 Raymond Moley, who supported the Hoover doctrine in his newspaper column and in Newsweek, wrote the former president that he did not think any speech had ever so clearly reflected the feeling of the country.31 Felix Morley expressed enthusiastic approval and added: “If the Europeans have any real desire to unite for self-preservation your speech will stimulate it. If they have no such desire, you have at least pointed to the course that we shall eventually have to follow.”32 As Hoover expected, the Eastern press did not welcome his speech. The New York Herald Tribune admitted that his position was not “isolationist,” since it embraced the Western Hemisphere as well as Great Britain, Japan, Taiwan, and the Philippines, but it coined a new term to describe his policy; “retreatism.” The doctrine had gained “increased stature,” the newspaper admitted, because of Hoover’s advocacy of it, and it represented a “body of opinion that must be reckoned with in the formation of American policy” because it appealed “to the angry frustration which events in Korea have aroused and because it offers what purports to be a cheaper way to defend America than by assisting allies.”33 President Truman wasted no time in reiterating his position that Western Europe’s defense was vital to the security of the United States. John Foster Dulles, Republican adviser to Truman’s State Department, was trotted out to give a speech that was widely hailed as the administration’s reply to the Hoover address. Despite the ballyhoo attempted by newspapers like the New York Times, however, the Dulles speech scarcely caused a ripple in the public, and even the Times confessed that the response to Dulles’ speech was “meager.” It reported that a sampling of congressional mail had found response to the Dulles speech to be “insignificant” and “disappointing,” in “sharp contrast to the heavy public response resulting from the Hoover speech.”34

Hoover’s position was quickly echoed with some modifications, by Senator Taft and others, but it also attracted the predicted smears and distortions. One such smear, circulated by the Democratic National Committee, accused Hoover and Taft of being “false prophets of doom” who were now advocating policies as “wrong” as those they had fought for in 1941. Two men who had been so completely in error a decade earlier could certainly not be judged competent, the argument went, in the present circumstances.35 Hoover addressed himself to this type of criticism in a speech on February 9, 1951. In that speech, Hoover recalled that in his address of June 1941 he had questioned the wisdom of the United States aligning itself with Soviet communism against German Nazism, and added: “Need I remind you that the grip of communism in this decade has spread slavery from 200,000,000 to 800,000,000? And we have no peace.” In 1951 Hoover reiterated the “stark realities” on which U.S. policies must be based, and again advocated that the American contribution to the defense of the free world be limited to a powerful navy and air force. The air threat to the Soviet Union, he insisted, was “far more powerful than pouring American divisions into the reach of this Asiatic horde.” A ground war, moreover, must be a defensive war, whereas in the air the United States could go on the offensive. Moreover, the concentration of U.S. resources on airpower would be less of a strain on the economy. Hoover had altered his doctrine since the December speech, however, and his position was now closer to that of Senator Taft and air power advocates like Major Alexander P. de Seversky. Although his December address had emphasized defense and included only the Atlantic and Pacific oceans and the areas in those oceans that could be defended by air and sea power, he now contemplated, as did Taft, the use of U.S. air and sea power in an offensive role to aid Western Europe if it were attacked by the Soviet Union. Where before he had resisted an American commitment to NATO unless the NATO countries rearmed to an adequate level, he now embraced that commitment but offered U.S. air and sea power in place of ground troops for an offensive role against the Soviet Union rather than a defensive one. Hoover argued correctly that what he now proposed was neither retreat nor withdrawal. “The essence of this program I have proposed is to effectively restrain our enemies from attack upon our allies or ourselves . . . it is the best chance of peace—even if it is an uneasy peace.”36 Despite Hoover’s opposition, the U.S. Senate did permit, by a vote of 49-43, the stationing of four divisions of U.S. ground troops in Europe, subject to the condition that President Truman did not increase that number without the approval of Congress. It appeared that Hoover had lost the second great debate as resoundingly as he had the one in 1941. There was some consolation in the fact that U.S. defense policy came increasingly to rely on the strategy of “massive retaliation,” especially with the Eisenhower years. But this did not replace, as Hoover had intended, the maintenance of a sizeable army and the stationing of ground troops overseas, and so the reduction in military expenditures that Hoover had envisioned did not materialize. After both of these great debates, subsequent events convinced Hoover that he had been correct in his positions. World War II did end with the grip of communism fastened on many more nations and peoples than before the war, and the willingness of the United States to commit ground troops to the defense of Western Europe did appear to lessen the sense of urgency among NATO nations to build their own defense forces adequately. Hoover, of course,

was less than objective in his appraisal of the results and always sought vindication for his positions. Yet other people, too, who might be considered more objective, have begun to question the inevitability of the events I have described and the desirability of the policies embraced by the United States in 1941 and 1950-51. For example, Robert Sherrill, Washington editor of The Nation, wrote in 1979: All admirers of Roosevelt, and even many of his critics, will contend that how or why he manipulated us into World War II really doesn’t matter because it was inevitable that we would eventually get in, and the sooner the better, for the cause was just and the results noble. It is time we begin seriously to question that old argument. Far from being noble, the results of World War II, like the effluence of Love Canal, have poisoned our earth seemingly forever. Most of the negative forces that make our national life so unhappy and irrational—the military-industrial waste, the impenetrable federal budget, the “national security” hysteria that is supposed to excuse FBI excesses, the covert insanity of the CIA, the incredibly unwieldy federal bureaucracy, the flatulent patriotism of our educators—became permanent fixtures with World War II.37

It would also not be difficult to assemble a pile of American complaints about the NATO allies’ unwillingness to take up the burden of their own defense that echo Hoover’s own observations of 1950 and 1951. Such complaints became particularly numerous and acute after NATO misgivings over the stationing of Pershing II missiles and nuclear cruise missiles in Europe and the unwillingness of the NATO powers to follow the U.S. lead in applying sanctions against Poland. My favorite observation, though, is that by Hedley Donovan in Time magazine: It is indeed remarkable and in some ways outrageous that we keep a large American army in Germany 36 years after the end of World War II, and make a greater defense effort (by most measurements) than the prosperous countries we are helping to defend, while even in the most responsible European conversations one sometimes catches an implication that NATO is somehow more to our interest than theirs.38

In fairness, however, it must be added that just because Hoover’s predictions came true it does not follow that his proposed policies would have yielded a better result or that the policies we did follow were wrong. Considering 1941, for example, one may well question whether it would have been a better world with Nazi Germany in possession of the vast territories and resources of the Soviet Union, able to link up with Japan in the east and to threaten India and the Middle East from the north, or with the Soviet Union victorious against Germany and in possession of all continental Europe. Yet those were the possible consequences if the United States had followed Hoover’s advice. Considering 1950-1951, we can only speculate, without knowing more intimately the minds of the Kremlin leaders in ensuing years, whether the presence of U.S. ground troops in Europe restrained the Soviet Union or not. All that can be said for certain is that the United States did not reap the happy results from the policies of 1941 and 1951 that their advocates claimed would follow, and that the critics of those policies deserve more attention and a fairer hearing than they have received. It may, in fact, be time for the second Great Debate to be resumed over the continued presence of forces in Europe over half a century later, and over a decade after the collapse of the Soviet Union. NOTES

Reprinted from Understanding Herbert Hoover: Ten Perspectives, edited by Lee Nash, with the permission of the publisher, Hoover Institution Press. Copyright 1987 by the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University.

1. Gary Dean Best, “Herbert Hoover as Titular Leader of the GOP. 1933-35.” Mid-America 56 (April-July 1979): 81-97. 2. Accounts of this trip may be found in Suda Bane, “Mr. Hoover’s European Trip. 1938.” and Perrin Galpin, “Through Europe with Mr. Hoover,” in the Hoover Papers, Post-Presidential Subject Files, Herbert Hoover Presidential Library, West Branch, Iowa (hereafter cited as HHPL). 3. Hoover to William Castle, April 6, 1933; Prince Konoe Fumimaro to Hoover, June 7, 1934 and December 11, 1936— Hoover Papers, Post-Presidential Individual Files (hereafter cited as PPI), HHPL; John Callan O’Laughlin to Hoover, April 3. 1933. O’Laughlin Papers, Library of Congress. 4. See, for example, his speech before the Council of Foreign Relations in February 1939, reprinted in Herbert Hoover, Further Addresses Upon the American Road, 1938-1940 (New York, 1940), pp. 93-103. 5. Article in Liberty magazine, April 1939, reprinted in Hoover, Further Addresses, pp. 104-15. 6. For Hoover’s support of aid for the democracies, see his speech of June 25, 1940, before the Republican National Convention, in Hoover Papers, Public Statements, 1940, HHPL. 7. For Hoover’s discussion with Hull see “Memorandum of a meeting with Hull at 9:30 on February 28. 1941,” PPL Cordell Hull, HHPL. 8. For Truman’s position see New York Times, June 23, 1941. 9. “Broadcast by Robert A. Taft over CBS, 6-25-1941,” PPl: Taft, HHPL. 10. Hoover speech of June 29, 1941, in Hoover Papers, Public Statements, 1941, HHPL. 11. Arch Shaw to Hoover, telegram, June 30, 1941, PPI, HHPL. 12. Edgar Rickard Diary, June 30, 1941, HHPL. 13. George Gallup, The Gallup Poll, vol. 1 (New York, 1972), pp. 286, 288. 14. The statement appeared in the New York Times, August 6, 1941. 15. Edgar, Rickard Diary, October 21, 1941, HHPL; Hoover to Joseph Scott, August 27, 1941, PPI, HHPL. 16. Hoover to Boake Carter, July 14, 1941, PPI, HHPL. 17. Hoover to Congressman Woodruff, July 14, 1941, PPI, HHPL. 18. The speech is in Hoover Papers, Public Statements, 1941, HHPL. 19. Hoover to Senator Kenneth Wherry, May 6, 1950, with memorandum, PPI, HHPL. 20. Senator Homer Ferguson to Hoover, July 17, 1950; Hoover to Ferguson, July 20, 1950—PPI, HHPL. 21. Speech to the Bohemian Encampment, in Hoover Papers, Public Statements, 1950, HHPL. 22. Ibid. 23. Hoover to Raymond Moley, December 18, 1950, Moley Papers, HHPL. 24. Hoover to Neil MacNeil, December 19, 1950, PPI, HHPL. 25. Hoover to Taft, December 18, 1950, Taft Papers, Library of Congress. 26. In Hoover Papers, Public Statements, 1950, HHPL. 27. San Francisco Examiner, December 21, 1950. 28. Arthur Kemp to Hoover, undated (probably December 1950 or early January 1951), PPI, HHPL. 29. Hoover to H. Alexander Smith, December 27, 1950, PPI, HHPL. 30. Richard Nixon to Hoover, December 22, 1950, PPI, HHPL. 31. Raymond Moley to Hoover, December 21, 1950, PPI, HHPL. 32. Felix Morley to Hoover, December 27, 1950, Morley Papers, HHPL. 33. New York Herald Tribune, December 22, 1950. 34. New York Times, January 3, 1951. 35. New York Herald Tribune, January 28, 1951. 36. In Hoover Papers, Public Statements, 1951, HHPL. 37. Robert Sherrill, “Backdoor to War.” Inquiry (May 14, 1979): 28. 38. Time 120 (August 10, 1981): 74.