viii Contents
9. THE INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE STAGE 73
Food and Agriculture — UNRRA Launched — A Forecast of the Division of Poland
10. THE BRETTON WOODS AGREEMENTS 81 Lend-Lease Negotiations with Moscow
11. A CHANGE OF SECRETARIES AND OF JOBS 8y Brave New World — Organizing for My New Job
12. CHIEF LOBBYIST FOR STATE 95
The Plan of Campaign — The Theory of Nonpartisan Foreign Policy — The Practice of Nonpartisan Foreign Policy — Reflections About Congress — We Take Our Case to the People — The Fourth Term Begins — The End of an Era
13. SUCCESS, DISENCHANTMENT, AND RESIGNATION lO^
Back to Lobbying — First Encounter with the United Nations — The War Ends and I Resign — An Attempted Jail Break
PART TWO: ACTION BEGINS
Under Secretary of State, August i^^^-June ip^j
14. A NEW JOB AND WIDENING RESPONSIBILITIES II9
The Mystery of My Appointment — The End of Lend-Lease — Introduction to Atomic Energy — A Brush with Senators — A Congeries of Tasks
15. TROUBLE IN HIGH PLACES 129
The Nine-Thirty Meeting — Strange Interlude — An Atomic Conference at the Summit — UNRRA and the British Loan — Introduction to China and General Marshall — Rift Between President and Secretary of State
16. WASHINGTON AGENT FOR THE MARSHALL MISSION:
PHASE ONE 139
The Situation As We Saw It — A Word About General Marshall — We Draft the General's Instructions — Months of Hope
17. THE ACHESON-LILIENTHAL REPORT 149
A Social Faux Pas — Stalin's Speech and Kennan's Report — International Control of Atomic Energy
18. THE DEPARTMENT MUFFS ITS INTELLIGENCE ROLE 1 ^J
The Nature of Intelligence — Primacy Is Offered to the Department — We Meet Opposition — The High Command Wavers — A Pre-McCarthy Attack — Secretary Byrnes Decides Against Me — I Decide to Resign
19. THE QUEBEC AGREEMENT l6^
My Introduction to Secret Diplomacy
Contents ix
20. THE PUZZLE OF PALESTINE 169
The Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry — The Cabinet Committee — Once More Unto the Breach — The Yom Kippur Statement: October 4, ic)^6 — Bevin Throws In the Towel — Responsibility Passes to the UN
21. TROUBLE BREWS IN WASHINGTON 183
Trouble from a Commencement Speech — Restlessness in the Cabinet — Trouble from a Lady — Mr. Molotov Pays Us a Visit — Bull in a Good-Neighbor Shop — The Immolation of Mr. Byrnes
22. TROUBLE BREAKS IN EUROPE 194
Stalin's Offensive: The Eastern Mediterranean; Trouble Moves Eastward to Iran; Then to Greece and Turkey — A Reception Committee of One — Battening Down the Hatches
23. WASHINGTON AGENT FOR THE MARSHALL MISSION:
PHASE TWO 202
Russian Intentions in China — Chiang's Manchurian Blunder — General Marshall's Influence Declines — Hope Fades — The General Packs Up — Last Scene
24. GENERAL MARSHALL TAKES OVER 212
Nature Deals a Cold Hand — The Stuff of Command — The Decision to Help Greece and Turkey
25. THE TRUMAN DOCTRINE 220 The President's Message — Vandenberg and the Legislation
26. THE CRISIS broadens: birth of the MARSHALL PLAN 226
First Stirrings — My Speech in Mississippi — Clayton's Second Memorandum — General Marshall's Harvard Speech
27. MUSTERED OUT 236
My Successor Is Chosen — Taking the Salute — The Habit-Forming Drug of Public Life — Return to Semiprivate Life: The Citizens' Committee for the Marshall Plan — A False Alarm — The First Hoover Commission: Battle Over a Chief of Staff; Recommendation of One Service in State; My Later Attempt to Create One Service
PART THREE: YEARS OF RESPONSIBILITY
Secretary oj State, 1949-19^^ Section A. Decisions Were Made Fast in 1949
28. RECALLED TO ACTIVE DUTY 249 Nomination, Hearings, and Confirmation
29. THE WORLD THAT LAY BEFORE US 2^^
The State of the Department — An Indispensable Aide — The State of the World: The Arab-Israeli Impasse; United States Policy Toward Germany; Crisis in Germany; The Blockade of Berlin
X Contents
30. AN EVENTFUL SPRING 26^
The Expectation — Point Four — Strengthening the Free Nations — The Unexpected: Ending the Blockade: Tlie Jessup-Malik Talks; Meeting with Bevin and Schuman; Agreement to Lift the Blockade — Reflections on Soviet Diplomacy
31. THE NORTH ATLANTIC TREATY:
AN OPEN COVENANT OPENLY ARRIVED AT 2j6
Problems of Negotiation: 1. The Press; 2. The Parties; 3. The Congress;
4. New Members; 5. Tlie Problem of Italy; 6. The Issue of Automatic Involvement
— A Cat Among the Pigeons — At Length a Treaty Emerges
32. ALLIED POLICY TOWARD GERMANY 28^
The Senate Advises and Consents to Ratification — Tripartite Agreement on Germany: Resolving French Worries — A Progress Report to the Nation
33. THE FOREIGN MINISTERS MEET IN PARIS 29I
Our Objective Clarified — Liturgy and Tactics in the Council — We Move to Paris
— The Setting of the Conference — The Meetings Begin — A Bleak Exchange About Germany — We Try Private Ministerial Meetings — The Conference Faces a Crisis — The Conference Straggles to an End
34. SUMMER BRINGS DIFFICULT DECISIONS 302
The China White Paper: The Emotional Nature of the China Issue — The Military Assistance Program: The Nature of the Political Issue; The Nature of the Military Issue; Vandenberg Leads a Revolt; We Try a New Lure; And Catch a Fish
— An 111 Wind Blows Some Good
35. ANGLO-AMERICAN ATOMIC COOPERATION REVIEWED 314
The British Raise the Question — Our Advice to the President — The Blair House Meeting — The Meeting with the Joint Committee
36. DEVALUATION OF THE POUND ^22
"The British Are Coming!" — Anglo-American Relations — Futile Meetings — The Point Finally Is Reached — More Talk: With Bevin and Schuman; With Other European Colleagues — The NATO Council Meets
37. MORE MEETINGS AT HOME AND ABROAD 330
On Latin America "Nothing New" — UN Problems Still Remain — Relations with Yugoslavia — A Visit from Pandit Nehru: Nehru on the Faults of Others; Nehru on Kashmir — The Paris Conference: German Policy Issues — First Meeting with Adenauer — First Visit to Berlin
38. A REAPPRAISAL OF POLICIES 344
The President's Instructions: Tlie Hydrogen Bomb Decision — China to the Fore Again — The "Strategic Concept"
Section B. Problems Came Faster in ip^o
39. THE ATTACK OF THE PRIMITIVES BEGINS 354
The Theme of China Lost — The Theme of Communist Influence: The Con viction of A Iger Hiss
Contents xi
40. THE ATTACK MOUNTS 362
Senator McCarthy Merges the Themes — Taft Supports McCarthy — The Attack Reaches Its Climax — A Few Bright Spots — Conckiding Thoughts
41. A NEW DEFINITION OF FOREIGN POLICY 371
Academic Interlude: Senator Taft Makes a Point — NSC-6S: A Difficult Pregnancy: The Threat Stated; The Response Recommended; We Explain to tlie Country; The Need for National Unity
42. EUROPE AND THE SCHUMAN PLAN 382
Scene 1: Paris — Scene 2: London — Scene 3: Lancaster House — Behind the Scenes
43. BALANCED COLLECTIVE FORCES FOR EUROPE 39O
Social Interludes — The Tripartite Meetings: Declaration on the Middle East — The Fourth Meeting of the Council: Basic Problems Emerge — Accomplishments at London — A Report to Congress
44. WAR IN KOREA: THE OUTBREAK 402
Seven Days in June: Saturday, June 24: Sunday, June 25,- Monday, Jime 26; Tuesday, June 27; Wednesday, June 28; Thursday, June 29; Friday, Jime 30
45. WAR IN KOREA: THE FIRST CRISIS 414
Thoughts on an Authorizing Resolution — An Anxious Summer: Anglo-Indian Peace Initiatives; Arms and the Men; MacArthur Drops Some Bricks; The Crisis Eases
46. SEPTEMBER DECISIONS 426
A Peace Treaty for Japan: The Situation in Japan; The Nature of the Problem; A New Cast of Characters; The Filibuster Ends; Agreement and Decision to Go Ahead — Germany and the Defense of Europe: The Need for German Participation; French Desire for U.S.-European Integration; The "One Package" Proposal
47. SEPTEMBER SURPRISES 441
General Marshall Returns to the Pentagon — The "One Package" Proposal Stalls: Adjournment ^rith Progress — Next Phase in Korea: Inchon: "Operation Common Knowledge"; "Perilous Gamble or Exemplary Boldness?"; Uniting for Peace; Long-Range Policy and Crossing the Parallel; Instructions to General MacArthur; "A United, Independent, and Democratic Korea"
48. OCTOBER ODYSSEYS 4^6
Pilgrimage to Wake — Another Round in NATO — A Bad Fright — I Criticize My Critics — MacArthur Moves North — Schizophrenia at GHQ — The Last Clear Chance
49. "AN ENTIRELY NEW WAR" 469
Disaster Rattles the General — Washington Plans Next Moves — Steady As You Go
50. DECEMBER DESPONDENCY ^J^
The Attlee Visit — A National Emergency Proclaimed — The Brussels Conference — The Great Debate Opens
xii Contents
Section C. i9$i: Year of Troubles and Frogress
51. CALMING WORRIES AT HOME AND TO THE SOUTH 49I
The Great Debate Flares and Fizzles: Briefing the Supreme Commander; The Debate Reaches Its Apogee; General Marshall Damps the Fire — Reassurance for the Good Neighborhood
52. DOUBLE TROUBLE IN IRAN 499
Crisis in Iran — Phase One: The Shah's Attempt — Phase Two: The Mosadeq Revolution: Mosadeq: A Sketch from Life; A Critical Spring; Violence Impends — Phase Three: The Harriman Mission — Phase Four: Hope Fades
53. ATTEMPTS TO STABILIZE THE KOREAN WAR ^12
On the Korean Front — On the United Nations Front — On the Tokyo Front — The Parallel Once More — The Final Showdown
54. THE RELIEF OF GENERAL MAC ARTHUR pi
The Days of Decision — The Communications Mix-Up — The Senate Hearings — Reflections
55. THE MOVE FOR AN ARMISTICE IN KOREA 529
Peace Feelers — The Kennan-Malik Talks — The Decision to Negotiate Through Ridgway — Foul-Up As Negotiations Start — Negotiations Off" and Fighting On — Negotiations Resumed at Panmunjom
56. PEACE WITH JAPAN 539 The Path to San Francisco — The Rules of Procedure — The Conference
57. NATO IN STAGNATION 551
France in Two Minds — Propaganda at the Palais Rose: An Agenda As a Weapon of War — Three Ministers in Search of Solutions: For German and Defense Problems; For Economic and Rearmament Problems — Schuman on Morocco
58. EGYPT AND THE MIDDLE EAST COMMAND ^62
The New Crisis of "Black Saturday" — Drift to Stalemate — Reflections
59. OTTAWA AND EXCURSIONS WITHOUT ALARUMS 569
A Futile Council Meeting: Invitations to Greece and Turkey; The Temporary Council Committee — De Gasperi's Visit — The Attack on Jessup: Ambassador to the Vatican; The Collision — Preparation for Paris
60. THE "DISARMAMENT ASSEMBLY" t^jS
The Moroccan Question — Reduction and Control of Arms: The Tripartite Plan — A Dinner at the Elysee Palace — The Proposal Straggles to Its End — We Meet with Adenauer
61. NATO MEETS IN ROME ^SS
Changes in the Department — Another Council Meeting Stalls — Year-End Summaries
Contents xiii
Section D. 19^2: Success mid Failure at the End
62. THE CHURCHILL VISIT 59^
A Word About Mr. Churchill — First Stage of the Visit — The Atlantic Command
— The Yoshida Letter — Hands Across the Sea
63. DEATH OF A KING 60J
Crisis in the Alliance — The King's Funeral: Tlie Pilgrimage to Windsor
64. FOUR MINISTERS MEET IN LONDON 6l^
Two Begin the Session — Schuman Joins Us — Adenauer Completes the Group — A Busy Night — An Equally Busy Morning: Quadripartite Meeting Resumed; Audience with the Queen; Confronting the Old Lion
65. LISBON 622
French and German Military Finances — Other Pieces Fall Into Place — The Grand Slam — Dr. Salazar
66. ONCE MORE UNTO THE BREACH 629
Thunder on the Left — The President Withdraws — Spring in Washington — The April Pilgrimage — Distractions Crowd In: Trieste; Tunisia; Berlin; The St. Lawrence Seaway — Spring Thaw in Bonn
67. BONN AND PARIS 643 Success in Bonn: Major Prerequisites to Final Agreement — Apprehension in Paris
68. KOREA: FRUSTRATION, RIOT, AND REVOLT 6^1
Voluntary Repatriation of Prisoners — Revolt in the Compounds — Bombing Bothers Britain
69. A SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY 6^S
England: Oxford Encaenia; Ministerial Meetings — On to Berlin — Vienna, City of Dreams — Dakar — Rio de Janeiro
70. INDOCHINA G-Jl
The Pre Korean War Phase — The Effect of the Korean War — Increasing Aid and Frustration
71. A SECOND TRY IN IRAN 679
One Effort Fails — New Characters Enter — Last Try — The President Approves a Variant — Eden's Vindication
72. ELECTION SUMMER 6S6 The ANZUS Meeting — Speeches Political and Otherwise — We Lose the Election
73. AN OPEN COVENANT OPENLY CONNIVED AGAINST 696
The Central Issue and Its Ambiance — The Menon Cabal — A Showdown Impends
— Canadian Interlude and Finale
xiv Contents
74. CHANGING THE GUARD Jo6
The Reluctant Conqueror — Farewell to NATO — Loyalty Problems Once More: United States Citizens Employed by the United Nations — A Final Memorandum
75. LAST FAREWELLS yi^ The Last Press Conference — Farewell to the Department — January 20, 1953
PART FOUR: EPILOGUE
Retrospection in Tranquillity
76. SUMMING UP yi^
The Struggle Through Illusion to Policy — Striking the Balance in Action — The President's Contribution — The Department's Contribution
APPENDICES
NOTES y^o
[Indicated by daggers (t) in the text]
REFERENCES yyo
[Indicated by superior numbers in the text]
INDEX 7 79
Photographs may be found following page 398
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Without the indefatigable and scholarly help of three assistants who have been with me every step of the way through this book, the effort would have been beyond me. Mrs. Marina S. Finkelstein, now Editor of Publications of the Harvard Center for International Affairs, and Miss Corinne Lyman, at present on the faculty of Ohio Wesleyan University, took over the scholarly examination of innumerable documents that fell from me during twelve busy years like autumn leaves, fitting the account of an individual life into greater surrounding action and tracing the influence and reaction of each on the other. They thus laid the foundation for my work and then rendered equal assistance by reviewing it and holding me to what Honor Tracy's Irish priest might have called the straight and narrow path between truth and error.
Miss Barbara Evans has played once more in this our sixth book together her familiar role as the custodian of my papers, my memory, and my conscience. From the first deciphering of an exotic calligraphy to the last grooming of the proof, she has pursued the serpent of error like a female St. Patrick. My gratitude to these three invaluable colleagues is great indeed.
For all of us the correction of errant memory has been greatly aided by the kindness of former Secretary of State Dean Rusk and Dr. William Franklin, Director of the Historical Office of the Department of State. Assistance on matters too numerous to list was rendered also by Dr. Arthur Kogan, Donald J. Simon, and Wilmer P. Sparrow, all of the Department of State, and by their helpful and resourceful staffs. To all we are deeply grateful.
Due to the forethought and kindness of the late Dr. Robert Oppenheimer, Director of the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, a group of my colleagues in the State Department met at the Institute with him and me every other month during 1953 and 1954 to record our recoflections of how the major foreign policies of President Truman's Administration came into being and our appraisal of the considerations that affected them and us. This group included Dean Rusk, W. Averell Harriman, Herbert Feis, Edward W. Barrett, Paul H. Nitze, Adrian S. Fisher, Joseph E. Johnson, George W. Perkins, and George C. McGhee, and (to stimulate and cross-examine us) McGeorge Bundy, then Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Harvard, Dr. Edward M. Earle of the Institute, and Professors George A. Graham and Harold Sprout of Princeton University. These seminars added to the account of those times the essential factors of causation that the bare official record so rarely reveals.
APOLOGIA PRO LIBRO HOC
"Pen, ink and paper," John Adams confided to his diary in 1770, "and a sitting posture are great helps to attention and thinking."^ I shall need them all in writing this book, which only five years ago I forswore. Why, I was then asked, "stop with the experiences of Morning and Noon? Why not go on to Afternoon, the time of larger events?" Because "detachment and objectivity" would become suspect. "The element of self-justification could not be excluded." It was all very simple, reasonable, and probably the right decision.
Yet I do go on. Why? Because I have changed my mind. The experiences of the years since I wrote have brought the country, and particularly its young people, to a mood of depression, disillusion, and withdrawal from the effort to affect the world around us. Today detachment and objectivity seem to me less important than to tell a tale of large conceptions, great achievements, and some failures, the product of enormous will and effort. Its hero is the American people, led by two men of rare quality. President Truman and General Marshall, served by lieutenants of whom I had the great good fortune to be one. The enormity of the task before all of them, after the wars in Europe and Asia ended in 1945, only slowly revealed itself. As it did so, it began to appear as just a bit less formidable than that described in the first chapter of Genesis. That was to create a world out of chaos; ours, to create half a world, a free half, out of the same material without blowing the whole to pieces in the process. The wonder of it is how much was done.
In the epigraph Alphonso X, King of Spain, is quoted to the effect that if he had been present at the creation he would have given some useful hints for the better ordering of the universe. In a sense the postwar years were a period of creation, for the ordering of which I shared with others some responsibility. Moreover, the state of the world in those years and almost all that happened during them was wholly novel within the experience of those who had to deal with it. "History," writes C. V. Wedgwood in her biography of William the Silent, "is lived forwards but it is written in retrospect. We know the end before we consider the beginning and we can never wholly recapture what it was to know the beginning only."- In a way, this volume is an attempt to do just that; for those who acted this drama did not know, nor do any of us yet know, the end.
Dean Acheson
YEARS OF LEARNING
Assistant Secretary of State, 1941-1945
1. ENLISTMENT FOR THE WAR TO COME
In SEPTEMBER 1939, soon after war broke out in Europe, a bitter debate engulfed the United States. One side, led by an organization called the America First Committee, proclaimed traditional isolationist views. The other, which I joined, rallied around the Committee to Defend America by Aiding the Allies, founded by the salty editor of the Emporia (Kansas) Gazette, William Allen White. Soon I was involved in more than debate, helping to bring about the destroyer-bases agreement between this country and Britain and to write speeches in the White House for the 1940 campaign. All of this, which has been told in detail elsewhere,^ led, in December 1940, to an invitation from Secretary of State Cordell Hull to leave my growing and pleasant law practice to join his Department as Assistant Secretary of State for Economic Affairs.
At that time I was forty-seven years old, in the middle of middle age, as Duff Cooper has defined the years from thirty to sixty. Neither the proffered office nor a return to the Roosevelt Administration held much appeal for me. I was no stranger to the latter. In 1933 I had served in it as Under Secretary of the Treasury—more accurately, as Acting Secretary due to Secretary Woodin's fatal illness—for six months until a spectacular row with the President and my resignation took me back to private life. Although the years that followed had brought reconciliation and generous attempts by the President to lure me back to public service, I had declined them.^ My attitude toward the President was one of admiration without affection, t
However, the wars in Europe and Asia were fast moving, as I saw it, toward disaster for the United States as well as the allies. The President and a good part of the government and the country seemed to me to be paralyzed between apprehension and action. Without illusions, I resigned from a partnership to which I was deeply attached and on February 2, 1941, reported for duty as Assistant Secretary of State.
THE WORLD AROUND US
The period covered by this book—1941 through 1952—was one of great obscurity to those who lived through it. Not only was the future clouded, a common enough situation, but the present was equally clouded. We all had far more than the familiar difficulty of determining the capabilities and intentions of those who inhabit this planet with us. The significance of events was shrouded in ambiguity. We groped after interpretations of them, sometimes reversed lines of action based on earlier views, and hesitated long before grasping what now
4 Assistant Secretary of State
seems obvious. The period was marked by the disappearance of world powers and empires, or their reduction to medium-sized states, and from this wreckage emerged a multiplicity of states, most of them new, all of them largely undeveloped politically and economically. Overshadowing all loomed two dangers to all—the Soviet Union's new-found power and expansive imperialism, and the development of nuclear weapons.
Moreover, the real nature of the European and Asian wars in the midst of which we found ourselves was obscured both to us in the State Department and to our fellow citizens. Our very name for the cataclysm—the Second World War—showed incomprehension. It was not until after we had left office that that percipient observer, Desmond Donnelly, M.P., suggested a beginning of comprehension of the intrinsic nature of the whole period from 1914 to 1945 by his term, the "European Civil War."^
The European Civil War • In the hundred years from Waterloo to Mons so gradually did the power of Germany grow—that combination of population, resources, technology, and will—that, like the growth of a child, those close to it were hardly aware of its extent. Nor were they fully conscious of technological changes that affected the relative power of Germany and Russia. In 1814 the combined power of all Europe was barely able to stop the French bid for hegemony. A century later it was thought—erroneously, as it proved—that the combined power of Europe could stop the German bid. By 1917 it was clear that this could not be done; the United States intervened to prevent German domination of Europe.!
Hitler tried again from 1939 to 1945. Two German bids for dominance in Europe constituted a thirty-year death struggle, with a truce in the middle. The great empires of Europe destroyed one another and, in doing so, the European-dominated world of the nineteenth century. This book begins four years before the end of the European Civil War. By that time the Ottoman and Austro-Hun-garian empires had disappeared altogether. The czarist empire had been replaced by the beleaguered, ruthless, powerful, and revolutionary Soviet dictatorship. France was defeated, disorganized, and occupied; her colonies in Asia were occupied by Japan, and in Africa were precariously held by Vichy. Britain, fighting gallantly, had bled near to death. Germany had lost her non-European colonies and possessions. She had, however, organized Europe as had not been done even by Napoleon. Hitler's will reigned from eastern Poland and Bessarabia to the Pyrenees and the Atlantic.
The Asian Civil War • Fair objection may be raised to Mr. Donnelly's phrase, the European Civil War, for ignoring the Asian Civil War, into which the United States was also drawn. The nineteenth century, which had seen such great development in Europe and America, produced the opposite result in China. There the impact of the West, and especially of its obstreperous offspring, Japan, disintegrated four millennia of civilization and the governmental system that had so well served this vast area and population. Finally the territorial integrity of the state itself dissolved.
Enlistment for the War to Come 5
Catholic missionaries had come to China from Europe as early as the sixteenth century, and the two areas were known to one another; but it was not until the eighteenth century that merchants followed in any number—the first American ship arrived toward the end of the century—and that Chinese art, architecture, and thought, as well as Chinese products imported by the East India companies, played a large and fashionable part in both Europe and America. At first the merchants were confined to Canton and to the "factories" there. The trials and frustrations of European attempts to negotiate with Chinese authorities are graphically told in Maurice Collis' book. Foreign Mud'^ (the Chinese name for opium), an account of Lord Napier's negotiations at Canton in the 1830s.
Soon the "barbarians" from the West and from Japan, finding the Celestial Empire too resistant to penetration through negotiation, resorted to five wars in a century to obtain their treaty ports, settlements, concessions, capitulations, and spheres of influence. New ideas, brought to China by hosts of returning students and through busy financial and industrial centers like Shanghai and Hong Kong, undermined the old ways and old loyalties. On the death of the Empress Dowager in 1911, the tottering Manchu Empire coflapsed at the push of revolution. Five more years of effort by Yuan Shih-kai to hold China together as a republic collapsed with his death in 1916. After four thousand years the greatest agglomeration of territory and people ever governed by man dissolved into a geographical expression ready for some new master or masters to conquer in whole or in parts, as opportunity offered.
The Japanese stood ready to seize such an opportunity while others were busy elsewhere. After their military defeat of Russia in the Far East in 1904 they succeeded to Russian interests in southern Manchuria and Korea, annexing the latter five years later. Further opportunity came during the opening phase of the European Civil War to seize the Shantung Peninsula from the Germans. Then the United States made a major mistake. Charles Evans Hughes was a gifted man, but his reputation as a Justice and Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court is likely to be rated higher than as a Secretary of State. At the Washington Conference of 1921, in his eagerness to terminate the Anglo-Japanese alliance, he agreed to a limitation of naval armaments and to prohibitions against fortifying Pacific islands, which gave the Japanese military supremacy in the northwestern Pacific!
They were not long in taking advantage of it. The Chinese state, as already noted, had disintegrated into a series of areas kaleidoscopically changing, merging, and separating again as the fortunes of various warlords rose and fell. Under the surface of this near anarchy two principles of organization were struggling for mastery—nationalism and communism. In 1923 they merged. Mikhail Borodin arrived in Canton from Moscow to help Sun Yat-sen put together an instrument—the Communist-Nationalist Kuomintang—for the creation of a modern, independent China free of foreign interference, except possibly Russian. Initiafly the movement met with swift success, as its forces moved north, taking over foreign-owned property and driving out its owners. Then the leaders fell out. In 1927 the Nationalists, led by Chiang Kai-shek, turned, in a bitter
6 Assistant Secretary of State
blood purge, against their erstwhile Communist comrades, who after some years of fighting found refuge, after their "long march," in north-central China. The Nationalists went on to Peking and declared themselves the government of China.
For the Japanese, however, the moment had come to stop this movement toward national reunification before it got out of hand. In 1931 and 1932 they occupied all of Manchuria, organizing it into a separate, Japanese-protected state. An attack on Shanghai in 1932 caused fulminations in the League of Nations, investigations, and resolutions. Disregarding these, the Japanese march into north and central China continued in 1934 and 1935. In the next two years it moved into south China. By 1938 the Nationalists had been driven into the southwest, and the Communists into the northwest, of China proper. Then a stalemate of sorts set in. Each of the three combatants wanted, and occasionally attempted, to injure the other two. However, the Chinese Nationalists and Communists lacked the capability to do so, and the Japanese, worried by growing American hostility to the Japanese co-prosperity sphere in Asia, their name for the conquest of China and domination of East Asia, hesitated to commit themselves fully.
AMERICAN ATTITUDES TOWARD THE OUTSIDE W^ORLD
The nature of the world around us in 1941 was one thing; American notions about it were quite another. Two contrary and equally unrealistic ideas about it competed for the national mind, both springing from our earlier history. From the American phases of the European wars of the eighteenth century— the dominant memory of the founders of this country—came the doctrine promulgated in the Farewell Address, in 1941 called isolationism. From the experience of the long period of world peace and economic development in the nineteenth century following the settlement of Vienna and the British Navy's support of the Monroe Doctrine, came the dream of universal law and internationally enforced peace, embodied and embalmed in the League of Nations and resurrected in the United Nations.
The Eighteenth-Century Experience • With all respect. General Washington took too narrow a view of the American phases of the European wars of the eighteenth century when he thought of them as resulting from mere dynastic rivalries of no concern to people beginning to think of themselves as "Americans." But he had a good excuse, for at the time both Europeans and Americans thought of these wars and named them in this way. The War of the Grand Alliance was known here as King William's War, the War of the Spanish Succession as Queen Anne's War, and the War of the Austrian Succession as King George's War; only the Seven Years' War was called the French and Indian War. General Washington in his Farewell Address bade his fellow countrymen to avoid entanglement with Europe.
The wars of the eighteenth century sprang from causes deeper than dynastic rivalries. For a century and a quarter French power—whether directed by
Enlistment for the War to Come 7
the Bourbon monarchy, the French republic, or the Bonapartist empire—drove with immense vitality for hegemony in Europe, North America, the West Indies, the Middle East, and South Asia. It was present and aggressive in North America, determined to keep the English settlements pinned between the Adantic and the eastern slopes of the Alleghenies. The long struggle ended only at Waterloo.!
The Nineteenth-Century Experience • The statesmanship of Metternich, Cas-tlereagh, and Talleyrand brought about the setdement of the wars with France. Begun at Vienna and finished at Paris, it permitted a century of international peace and of greater technological and economic development than in the whole period since the invention of the sail and wheel. But it was Canning who made it not only possible but inevitable that General Washington's advice should be followed. By putting the sanction of the British fleet behind the Monroe Doctrine, he made sure that the scattered and divided nine million Americans, with their center of population a few miles west of their capital city—as raw and un-established as their state—could attack the enormous task of occupying an unexplored continent free from interference from Europe's hundred and ninety million, or any part of them.
Thus in the Europe-oriented-and-dominated world of the nineteenth century the western hemisphere became out of bounds for colonial expansion. But not for investment. Europe, after a few years of doubt, stood ready to invest in the American gamble. Throughout the century the flood of "foreign aid" grew and grew until in the half century preceding 1914 Western Europe, led by Great Britain, "had invested abroad almost as much as the entire national wealth of Great Britain. ... If the same proportion of American resources were devoted to foreign investment as Britain devoted . . . in 1913, the flow of investment would require to be thirty times as great. The entire MarshaU Plan would have to be carried out twice a year."^
Economically the globe was indeed "one world." The great empires of Europe, through their colonies and spheres of influence, spread authority, order, and respect for the obligation of contract almost everywhere; and where their writs did not run, their frigates and gunboats navigated. Methods were rough, division of benefits was unfair, and freedom was not rated high among the priorities; but people, goods, and ideas moved around the world with less restraint than ever before and, perhaps, ever again. Tennyson's "Locksley Hall" (1842) contains a nineteenth-century forecast of a United Nations, f
American Notions About China • Throughout the nineteenth century, and even later, the attitude of Americans toward China had been ambivalent. Their government described the American aim as the "Open Door" policy: the door to trade should be open—the very thing the Chinese authorities did not want— and the opportunities for trade should be equal. It opposed private entrances to spheres of influence. When the Boxers rose against all foreigners, whom the Empress Dowager had condemned to wholesale death, the United States joined in the military expedition for their suppression. After the uprisings, the victorious
8 Assistant Secretary of State
allies exacted reparations from China for the damage done to them, but the United States set aside its share of the indemnities for the education of Chinese students.
The U.S. clipper ships that were racing to the Orient, as intent upon the profits of the China trade as any, also carried missionaries to educate the minds and heal the bodies as well as save the souls of the heathen Chinese. Hardly a town in our land w^s without its society to collect funds and clothing for Chinese missions, to worry about those who labored in distant, dangerous, and exotic vineyards of the Lord, and to hear the missionaries' inspiring reports.
Thus was nourished the love portion of the love-hate complex that was to infuse so much emotion into our later China policy. Also out of this background came, much later, a notion of President Roosevelt's which seemed quixotic to Churchill and Stalin: that China, with our help and under our tutelage, would rise from its ashes to the position of a great power and play a beneficent role after the war in bringing stability to Asia.
Ideas of the world around us such as I have described could hardly have been relevant to the steep rush into world war toward which both the government I joined and the people it served were soon to experience. My story deals with how both adjusted themselves to harsh reality.
2. THE "OLD" STATE DEPARTMENT
In FEBRUARY 1941 the Department over which the Secretary of State presided was less than a quarter of its present size, made up at home and abroad of twelve hundred officers and twenty-nine hundred other American employees. With the Bureau of the Budget it shared the old State, War, and Navy Building on Pennsylvania Avenue, across West Executive Avenue from the White House, and had bureaus scattered all over town. "Old State," a well-known Washington architect has maintained, was built from the same basic plan as the Treasury on the other side of the White House, although it was erected half a century later and thus, in accordance with the architectural style of the period, has pillared porticoes and a mansard roof instead of the classic simplicity of the Treasury. Only a few years ago it was regarded as a horror. Now Congress has appropriated a staggering sum to restore the much-cut-up interior, which houses the Executive Office of the President, to the spacious dignity it had when, after the Civil War, it was built to accommodate three whole departments of government. It is to be preserved as a "national monument." Congress does not entertain the same sentiment about those who have inhabited it.
THE SECRETARY OF STATE
Cordell Hull was a handsome man. He looked like a statesman in the classic American tradition—the tradition of the great Virginia dynasty, of Henry Clay, of Daniel Webster (but much handsomer, more like Warren Harding). His well-structured face was sad and thoughtful, his speech slow and gentle, except when he was aroused, as over the duplicity of the Japanese emissaries at the time of Pearl Harbor. Suspicious by nature, he brooded over what he thought were slights and grievances, which more forthright handling might have set straight. His brooding led, in accordance with Tennessee-mountain tradition, to feuds. His hatreds were implacable—not hot hatreds, but long cold ones. In no hurry to "get" his enemy, "get" him he usually did.
Mr. Hull's feuds grew out of his relations with President Franklin Roosevelt. The natures of the two men being what they were, their relations were bound to have been difficult. The Secretary—slow, circuitous, cautious—concentrated on a central political purpose, the freeing of international trade from tariff and other restrictions as the prerequisite to peace and economic development. With almost fanatical single-mindedness he devoted himself to getting legislative authority, and then acting upon it, to negotiate "mutually beneficial reciprocal trade agreements to reduce tariffs" on a basis of equal application to
10 Assistant Secretary of State
all nations, a thoroughly Jeffersonian policy. These often-enunciated words, due to a speech impediment, emerged as the "wecipwocal twade agweement pwogam to weduce tawiffs."
Mr. Hull's amazing success with this important undertaking, a reversal of a hundred years of American policy, was due both to his stubborn persistence and to his great authority in the House of Representatives and the Senate, in each of which he had served. It is all the more remarkable that, unlike almost all the New Deal economic legislation once regarded as radical, the executive power to negotiate trade agreements has not been permanently incorporated in American legislation, but only extended from time to time for short periods with alternating contractions and expansions of scope.
While the Secretary had concentrated on external trade in the prewar administration, the President's interest was absorbed by the effects of the Great Depression on the internal economy. Neither man—in common with most of his fellow citizens—was aware of the catastrophe building up in Europe and Asia, which would dwarf the preoccupations of both. When, later on, the President's quicker perception awakened to it, he got little help from the Secretary and turned elsewhere for it. At the outset, however, economic problems strained their relations.
The strains began with the debacle of the London Economic Conference of July 1933, torpedoed by the President with the Secretary on the bridge. Looking back on that unhappy episode, it seems to have been caused primarily by divided counsel within the Administration and sloppy preparation, which obscured for both the President and the Secretary the relation between the foreign and domestic issues involved and the essential connection between foreign trade policy and international monetary arrangements. Eleven years later, in 1944—the last year of Mr. Hull's long tenure—these issues had been resolved, and brilliant results were achieved at the International Monetary Conference at Bretton Woods. Ironically, this conference was presided over by the Secretary's arch rival for the President's favor. Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau.
In 1933 Mr. Hull did not fix blame for the disaster upon the ineptness of a new and disorderly administration, nor would loyalty permit him to place it upon the President. However, a satisfactory villain was at hand. Raymond Moley, a professor of economics at Columbia University and a member of Governor Roosevelt's campaign "brain trust," had been made an Assistant Secretary of State. The appointment would not have been made over the Secretary's objection, but he accepted and resented it. Years later he wrote: "Mr. Roosevelt, without much ceremony, appointed Raymond Moley as one of my Assistant Secretaries of State. . . . I . . . concluded that Mr. Roosevelt was placing him in this position, not to render regular service as Assistant Secretary of State, but to continue to stay close around the President. ... In any event, I was not at all enthusiastic about this sort of appointment, and I grew less enthusiastic until the London Economic Conference was over and Moley retired from the State Department."^
Mr. Moley's flamboyant part in the collapse of the conference humiliated
The "Old" State Department 11
Mr. Hull. Before long, other duties were found for Mr. Moley, and he returned, disgruntled, to Columbia. Mr. Hull cut a notch in his rifle stock.
Trouble, however, continued. The President chose to raise prices as the principal method of stimulating American agriculture and industry. To accomplish this he set about depreciating the dollar by monetary devices. This campaign conflicted sharply with Mr. Hull's principal aim, the freeing and stimulation of international trade. If American prices were artificially raised, they would attract foreign goods, which would defeat the price rise. Accordingly, these goods must be excluded. The Agricultural Adjustment Act, the brain child of Secretary of Agriculture Henry Wallace, gave the President power to do so should he find that imports threatened to imperil domestic prices. Where foreign markets were of great importance, as they were to farm products, such men as George N. Peek, former Administrator of the Agricultural Adjustment Administration, advocated bilateral, practically barter, deals with selected nations, a deathblow to the most-favored-nation principle. Mr. Hull was constantly fighting the President's favorites for the very life of his basic policy.
More and more the President turned to other, more energetic, more imaginative, more sympathetic collaborators—General Hugh Johnson, "Old Iron-pants" of the NRA; Henry Wallace and Rexford G. Tugwell for agriculture and housing; Harry Hopkins and Harold Ickes to create employment; Morgen-thau and Jesse Jones to rehabilitate finance; Frances Perkins to do the same for labor. Except for the secretaries for the armed services, whom the President dealt with directly as Commander in Chief, the Secretary of State—the senior Cabinet officer—became one of the least influential members at the White House. It was neither the first nor the last time this has happened. It is never good for the United States.
A HOUSE DIVIDED AGAINST ITSELF
Even in his own field and in his own Department the Secretary's influence and authority were diluted. His first Under Secretary, William Phillips, a great gentleman and an experienced diplomat but not a strong administrator, resigned in 1937 to become Ambassador to Italy. Mr. Hull has told us that he regretted this because he knew that it would "open Pandora's box." But, again, as in the case of Moley's appointment, he did nothing about the succession and remained passive, leaving the decision to the President. Two assistant secretaries —Sumner Welles and R. Walton Moore—were vying for Phillips' place. Welles had been an Assistant Secretary since the beginning of the Administration, except for a few months as Ambassador to Cuba, during which his activities produced a regime that gave way to the Grau San Martin-Batista dictatorship after three weeks. Welles had close family relations with the President and had gone to the same school; with Mr. Hull he was stiff and formal. Walton Moore, with the same southern legal and political background as the Secretary's, had served with him in Congress; they were easy and companionable together.
Mr. Hull, believing that the President favored Welles, would make no
12 Assistant Secretary of State
recommendation. The President, believing that Mr. Hull favored Moore, took no action. Finally the two assistant secretaries worked out a compromise. Welles would be Under Secretary and Moore would become Counselor, an office which had been allowed to lapse. The Secretary and the President accepted the compromise. But, as in the case of Moley, it was a mistake. Increasingly, Welles worked directly with the President, naturally enough in view of their close relationship and of Welles's incisive mind and decisive nature. He grasped ideas quickly and got things done. More and more he took over liaison with the White House on international political matters. Mr. Hull rankled under what he believed to be Welles's disloyalty and the President's neglect. The Department became divided into Welles men, who looked to the Under Secretary, particularly in the Latin American field, and Hull men, who sought guidance from the chief. This unhealthy situation blew up in August 1943, when, as Mr. Hull relates it, he asked the President to remove Welles and the President complied.^ Meanwhile it poisoned the Department.
My own relations with Welles were good throughout this period. He had been in the class ahead of me at boarding school, and we met again during my brief time in the Treasury. His manner was formal to the point of stiffness. His voice, pitched much lower than would seem natural, though it had been so since he was a boy, lent a suggestion of pomposity. Once, when a remark of my wife's made him laugh, he quickly caught himself and said, "Pardon me. You amused me." Out of the office he could be a charming host and an appreciative guest. Perhaps his greatest recommendation to me was the devoted friendship of his classmate, Charles P. Curtis of Boston, one of the most original minds and delightful of companions. Welles was not an easy man to know, but I respected and liked him.
MY COLLEAGUES
My fellow assistant secretaries were a mixed bag. The senior of them was Breckinridge Long, formerly of Missouri but in 1941 the owner of one of Maryland's most beautiful colonial houses, Montpelier, near Laurel. Like Mr. Hull, he was a gentleman of the old school—spare, courteous, and soft-spoken. As his house and his wife Christine's distinguished collection of silverware indicated, he was well off. Thoroughbreds graced the pastures surrounding Montpelier; destined for the track, their promise always seemed to exceed their performance. Genial and popular at the Metropolitan and Alibi clubs, Breck Long took life easily and enjoyed it.
In Missouri he had been a staunch Wilson Democrat, during the war serving for a while under Lansing as Assistant Secretary of State. Then, when Wilson's health and fortunes were hopelessly broken, Breck with courage above and beyond the call of duty fought two elections for the Senate against the Missouri machine of Wilson's arch enemy. Senator James A. Reed, one of them against the old "irreconcilable" opponent of the League of Nations himself. But those times, which I have called "the desert years of the human spirit,"
The "Old" State Department 13
were as bitter for Democrats in Missouri as they were elsewhere, as another Missourian, Harry S. Truman, was also learning.
In 1933 a new President recalled the old soldier from the wilderness and sent him off as Ambassador to Italy. Long began with admiration for Mussolini, which earned him enemies at home, but, earlier than most of his critics, he saw the drift of affairs and coming dangers in Europe. At that point illness retired him to private life for three years. In September 1939, as the war he foresaw broke out, he returned to the State Department at Mr. Hull's call.
It was pretty plain that Long was Mr. Hull's principal confidant and emissary. In his diary he describes playing the part of sympathetic friend, as Mr. Hull
launched into the White House attitude and treatment of the Department and encroachment in Foreign Affairs; criticized the appointment of Winant [as Ambassador to Great Britain] as being entirely unacquainted with the operations of Foreign Affairs, though a "fine young man" . . . ; then for relying on Hopkins and some others for advice as to policy; . . . and then Mrs. Roosevelt for encouraging persons to strike, as she is reported to have done yesterday.
He was in a sombre mood and very communicative—and it seems to be my fate to receive confidences of Secretaries of State in disagreement with their Presidents— but this is child's play compared to the Lansing situation.'^
I do not recall him taking part in Mr. Hull's speech-writing or Sunday-morning conferences. This may be failure of memory, but I put his absence down to good judgment, of which Breckinridge Long had plenty.
A month after I came to the Department, Howland Shaw was appointed Assistant Secretary in Charge of Administration, a job which should be undertaken only by a saint or a fool. Shaw was no fool, and had many saintly qualities as well as some hard common sense. He needed all of these, for the House and Senate subcommittees in charge of appropriations, their chairmen, and the Comptroller General's office make this job a perfect hell. Like an ill-tempered chatelaine of a medieval manor, her keys hanging from her belt. Congress parsimoniously and suspiciously doles out supplies for the shortest time, each item meticulously weighed and measured, each request at first harshly denied. Almost simultaneously yesterday's accounting goes on amid screamed accusation and denunciation of every purpose of policy.
Howland and I had been at school together for a while. He had gone into the Foreign Service, principally in the Near East. It had not been the layman's idea of a diplomatic environment. His experience there began when Mustapha Kemal, later caffed Ataturk, a man of extraordinary stature, was defying the armed forces of the allies and the centuries-old customs and lethargy of the Turks to make a new and modern nation. One of Shaw's dispatches describes a scene early one morning in the square of the then mud village of Ankara, high on the Anatolian plain, during Kemal's suppression of a Kurdish revolt:
"Each man was hung from a tripod and had on a sort of white smock with a placard pinned to him on which was scrawled his name and some account of his crime. There were groups of spectators in front of each tripod and others,
14 Assistant Secretary of State
intent I suppose upon a more careful inspection, were seated upon the steps of nearby houses. Children were scurrying about and nobody seemed particularly concerned. It was a sight like any other."^
Shaw, a bachelor and a most eligible one, seemed to be a likely prospect for that most sought-after necessity of the Washington dinner party, an unattached man. But he resolutely refused to go out. A converted Catholic, he threw himself with great devotion into the work of the National Catholic Welfare Conference and, over the years, became a recognized authority on juvenile delinquency. This point of view he brought to the decision of a group of cases that came before him, Adolf Berle, and me as members of the Foreign Service Board. A Foreign Service officer, wishing to marry a foreign national, had to seek permission from us and file, along with his request for it, an undated resignation. Whether this was a test of serious intention or to relieve us from direct heart breaking was unclear. Our approaches to the problem were diverse. Shaw leaned toward the litmus test of home leave and a change of post. Berle saw the dangers to security. I was inclined to favor Anglo-Saxons and Latin Americans as readily convertible, disfavor Europeans—except Italians—and to be inquisitive about the how, when, and why of the romance. On the whole, we were not stern judges.
In another situation, however, it was necessary to be—where officers abroad sold their dollar salary and allowance checks on the black market. The temptation to do so was great, since the official exchange rate often bore little relation to the actual value of the local currency. If a Foreign Service inspector could turn up these deals, they must be pretty generally known in the mission and in the community. The advertisement of potential venality in an embassy could open the way to a host of troubles. If—as once occurred—the politically appointed ambassador, beyond our reach, condoned these dealings because "everybody else did it," we found it no excuse for his staff. We could and did report the facts to the Secretary, who had his own method of bringing about a transfer of the chief of mission to a country with a stronger currency.
Among the duties of the Foreign Service Board was the recommendation of promotions and retirements. To read and discuss efficiency reports gives one interesting insights into both the writer and subject, and, when continued over four years in a service of less than a thousand people, half of whom one had also met, a pretty good knowledge of the group. Of course, not all officers in the Department then—or, indeed, now—were in the Foreign Service; in 1941 more were under civil service and could not be assigned to duty abroad. These, too, one came to know and appraise.
Rowland Shaw retired in 1944, when Mr. Hull did so, and devoted himself to welfare work. He was a lonely man. Nothing described this side of him more movingly than the last line of his obituary in the Washington Post after his death in August 1965. It read simply, "He had no survivors."
I have mentioned Adolf Berle. The fact that we disliked one another is too well known to attempt to disguise. Its causes are irrelevant—and useless to discuss, for, as Horace observed, de gustibus non est disputandum. At any rate, for four years, until he became Ambassador to Brazil, we maintained a wary
The "Old'' State Department 15
coexistence on the second floor of Old State, separated by the offices of the Secretary and Under Secretary, who side by side managed to do the same thing.
THE LOCATION OF BUREAUCRATIC POWER
An understanding of the ancient and, to outsiders, mysterious organization, as it was to me when I joined it, requires a look at its work and at those who did it. The prewar State Department was closer to its nineteenth-century predecessors in both what it did and how the work was done than to the department I was later to command. Between the two a great world change and General Marshall had intervened.
As the preceding chapter has indicated, the impingement in the nineteenth century of what the Supreme Court has called "the vast external realm" upon American interests occurred rarely, and usually only when wars between foreign nations interfered with our commerce or when foreign nations intervened in our hemisphere, as the French did in Mexico and the British in Venezuela. For the most part the prewar Department was concerned with treaties of commerce or navigation or, during the Bryan period, of arbitration, while the general run of business involved extricating Americans from trouble abroad or helping them engage in commercial ventures from which others wished to exclude them. Most revealing is the utter triviality of the correspondence between President Harrison and Secretary of State James G. Blaine, from 1889 to iSgi.^ In the infancy of the telephone and the typewriter, they wrote to each other in longhand almost every day, largely about appointments and minute points of draftsmanship in the Bering Sea seal fisheries treaty.
As a result, most matters that concerned the Department arose from specific incidents or problems and then evolved into policies, rather than beginning as matters of broad decision and ending in specific action. In this way the departmental division having jurisdiction to deal with the incident became the basic instrument for the formulation and execution of policy. Having a supposed monopoly of knowledge of the subject matter, it advised the Secretary on the action, if any, to be taken in the case at hand—thus becoming a formu-lator of policy—and, after the Secretary's decision, had charge of transmitting instructions to the field.
Bureaucratic power had come to rest in the division chiefs and the advisers, political, legal, and economic. To the traditional four geographic divisions—American Republics, European, Near Eastern, Far Eastern—and the Legal Adviser, had been added, after the First World War, the Passport and Visa divisions, with almost absolute power to decide who might leave and enter the country. Mr. Stimson had created the Economic Adviser, and Mr. Hull the Commercial Treaties and Agreements Division and the Division of Special Research, the latter to concern itself with world organization for peace.
The heads of all these divisions, like barons in a feudal system weakened at the top by mutual suspicion and jealousy between king and prince, were constantly at odds, if not at war. Their frontiers, delimited in some cases by geography and in others by function, were vague and overlapping. Obscurity in
16 Assistant Secretary of State
lines of command of the assistant secretaries permitted the division chiefs to circumvent them at will and go directly to the Secretary or Under Secretary. In such a situation it is not surprising that the table of organization, so-called, for the Department of State was not the source of authority. In reality, authority fell to him—or to her, in the case of the Queendom of Passports ruled over by Mrs. Ruth Shipley—who could take and hold it. For the most part the barons were knowledgeable people performing in a way that the times had completely outdated, a fact of which they were quite unaware. Townsend Hoopes, later to be Under Secretary of the Air Force, has put his finger on what was the basic weakness of the Department at the time of which I write: "Our difficulty is that, as a nation of short-term pragmatists accustomed to dealing with the future only when it has become the present, we find it hard to regard future trends as serious realities. We have not achieved the capacity to treat as real and urgent—as demanding action today—problems which appear in critical dimension only at some future date. Yet failure to achieve this new habit of mind is likely to prove fatal."^ In this weakness, however, the division chiefs were not unique. The President and his Administration had come to power contemporaneously with Hitler but, as mentioned earlier, had remained curiously insensitive to the significance of developments in Europe and Asia during their nearly ten years in office. Intense in his concentration on the domestic depression and social and economic reforms, the President failed to see the aggressive intentions and power to back them developing in Germany and Japan and left foreign affairs to the moralistic, pacifist, and laissez faire preachments of the State Department and the isolationist sentiments of the Congress and the country. Awakened by Dunkirk, he found Germany in control of Europe and Japan in control of east China. The position of the United States had undergone a drastic change; the purposes and capabilities of the State Department had not.
Within a year of my arrival in the Department, American military forces would be actively engaged in all four of the geographic areas and our representatives would be organizing economic supply and warfare all over the globe. However, the Department had no ideas, plans, or methods for collecting the information or dealing with the problems that this situation presented. With some brilliant exceptions, the bureaucracy was unequipped for appraisals of capability based on quantitative and technical judgments and of intentions by painstaking and exhaustive collection and correlation of intelligence. Only Herbert Feis, the Economic Adviser, foreseeing trouble, was at work on the stockpiling of strategic materials.
MY SEARCH FOR A FUNCTION
My inherited quarters consisted of two large, high-ceilinged rooms in the southwest corner of Old State, adjoining Mr. Hull's office. A corridor between the rooms had been enclosed to provide space of sorts for secretaries. Together we stifled under the full blast of the summer sun aided by its reflection from the roof of the portico just below the corridor window and unabated by any such newfangled contrivance as air conditioning. We stifled all winter, too, through
The "Old" State Department 17
equal inability to control the government's heating system. The other room housed my assistants—Donald Hiss, who had been a law clerk for Justice Holmes; Adrian Fisher, who joined us after service with Justices Brandeis and Frankfurter; Edward G. Miller of New York, later an Assistant Secretary of State under me; Jacques Reinstein; and Robert Carr. My secretary, Miss Barbara Evans, who had come—and happily still remains—with me, presided in between. That corner lives in memory as a crowded, busy, hot, noisy, and— gradually—embattled place. Outside our door a messenger dozing in a wooden swivel chair awakened occasionally to escort papers on their supposed appointed round of the Department, followed by other baying messengers pursuing fugitive documents. Barbara Evans devised a system for logging papers in and out of our corner that greatly increased our defensive position and was used by others in their search for lost papers.
I soon discovered that the greater part of a day in Old State was devoted to meetings. Where the boundaries of jurisdiction were fuzzy or overlapping, meetings became inevitable. Most questions affected a number of functional and geographic divisions. Who called a meeting and who attended, both matters of prestige, depended on early claim and persistent support of it. These meetings gave the illusion of action, but often frustrated it by attempting to reconcile the irreconcilable. What was most often needed was not compromise but decision.
My official duties were summed up in the Department of State Bulletin by a misleading platitude: "coordination of commercial and economic questions with questions of major policy." In fact, however, they had no such sweep since responsibility for a lot of this coordination lay elsewhere in the Department. For instance, among Berle's assignments was "coordination of financial questions with questions of major policy" and, as I have pointed out, Feis had long concerned himself with stockpiling foreign materials for war production and other supply problems.
The fine print of the departmental order stated more revealingly: "General supervision of the following units of the Department of State, including, except as otherwise provided, the signing of correspondence with respect to the work thereof: Division of Commercial Treaties and Agreements; Division of Controls; Treaty Division; Division of Commercial Affairs; and the Editor of Treaties."''
The war had reduced to a bare minimum the usual activities of the divisions under my supervision, except for the Division of Controls, which dealt with the issuance of export licenses. As may be imagined, its business had boomed. Although paper work and committee meetings continued in the other divisions, the work did not amount to much. Discussion of a trade agreement with Ecuador dragged along. A desultory argument with Haiti debated whether her proposed arrangements with the Dominican Republic violated the most-favored-nation principle. Talks opened with Iceland that over the next four years were to teach me more about sheepskins than I wanted to know; the United States came to own more of these than Abraham ever dreamed of. Discussions with India of a "treaty of establishment, commerce, navigation and
18 Assistant Secretary of State
consular rights" were abruptly terminated by a significant message from the Indian Agency General that it was felt "wiser, in view of the changed situation in India, to defer the conclusion of the negotiations until conditions are more settled."^ They were destined to become less settled before they were more settled.
In accepting Mr. Hull's invitation to enlist, I had a much clearer idea of what I wanted to do than he had of what he wanted me to do. Ever since the invasion of Poland, all through the "phony war," I had thought and said that the United States was deeply involved in the struggles going on in both Europe and Asia. The German assault on France, the disaster in Dunkirk, and the Battle of Britain all urged action in our own interest before, as Colonel Stimson kept saying, it might be too late. Both Mr. Hull and the President knew of my activity before I came to the State Department. They also knew me and, surely, had not asked me into the Department to perform the largely nonexistent duties defined in the Bulletin.
Whose idea it was to appoint me I learned only recently. When Mr. Hull issued the invitation, he gave the impression that it was his. Felix Frankfurter believed that FDR took the initiative. Looking through Breckinridge Long's War Diary, I came across a notation under the date of January 3, 1941, that Mr. Hull had shown him a chit signed "F.D.R." saying "that he wanted Dean Acheson to fill the vacancy Grady left."^ Digging up this little fact buried for a quarter of a century gave me real pleasure. For a long time I had belonged to the dubious few whom FDR had fired. Now I had the distinction of joining the even fewer he had ever taken back. At any rate, I did not come back to dream in a somnolent office. Plainly plenty of work was waiting to be done. The question was: Would the State Department do it? I proposed to have a shot at finding out.
The handiest entrance for me to the field of action was through supervision of the Division of Controls. The State Department had gotten into the licensing of exports through the Neutrality Acts of the 1930s, a product of the Nye Committee's investigation and belief that wars came from the munition makers' desire to sell their wares. So their export was forbidden, save as the Department in charge of our foreign relations under the President might find in the national interest. When, however, in July 1940, Congress broadened the executive authority to control export of anything essential to our national defense, the President took the first step toward diminishing, if not virtually eliminating, the Department's function in this field.
"While the control of exports is primarily a national-defense matter," his press statement of July 2, 1940, read, "the Department of State provides the machinery for the actual issue of licenses under which any controlled items are released for export." By an accompanying "military order," he designated "Lieutenant Colonel Russell L. Maxwell, U.S. Army, Administrator of Export Control to administer the provisions of the said section under the direction and supervision of the President as Commander-in-Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States.''^"
It was, of course, artful in the election year 1940 to represent the extension
The "Old" State Department 19
of export controls as a mere prudent measure for husbanding militarily essential goods and to minimize its foreign policy aspects, but it soon became apparent that it was far from the truth. Within the month the export of aviation gasoline was restricted to the western hemisphere. The Japanese reaction was immediate: "As a country whose import of American aviation gasoline is of immense volume, Japan would bear the brunt of the virtual embargo. The resultant impression would be that Japan had been singled out for and subjected to discriminatory treatment. . . . The Government of Japan wishes to protest against the policy of the Government of the United States."^^
On September 30, 1940, the same limitations were placed on the exportation of "all iron and steel scrap of every kind and description, classified and unclassified." This time export to Great Britain was exempted from the order. Again the response was immediate.
In view of the fact that Japan has been for some years the principal buyer of American iron and steel scrap, the announcement . . . cannot fail to be regarded as directed against Japan, and, as such, to be an unfriendly act.
The Japanese Government protests ....
* * *
... In view of the high feeling in Japan it is apprehended that, in the event of continuation by the United States Government of the present attitude toward Japan in matters of trade restriction, especially if it leads to the imposition of further measures of curtailment, future relations between Japan and the United States will be unpredictable.
These were strong words in days when nations still addressed one another with the restraint of diplomatic usage and before shoes were used to beat desks for emphasis. Again in December similar restrictions and exceptions were applied to all iron and steel—ores, pig iron, alloys, and both semifinished and finished products. Once more the Japanese protested "against this fresh measure of discrimination."
A few more categories were added to the list in the late winter and spring after I joined the Department, and there the matter hung fire until well into the summer. Discussion went on in Mr. Hull's Sunday-morning staff meetings.! The issue was over the embargo or drastic reduction of petroleum exports other than the already embargoed aviation gasoline. The aim was to limit Japanese military action in East and Southeast Asia; the danger, provoking Japan to seize or intimidate the Dutch East Indies—a great source of petroleum —or to move against us. The soldiers were quoted as favoring delay while we rearmed and increased our potential threat, and the civilian secretaries as being inclined to a bolder course. The argument for it was that no rational Japanese could believe that an attack on us could result in anything but disaster for his country. Of course, no one even dimly foresaw the initial success of an attack. A Japanese move against the Indies, it was thought, involved too great a risk with our fleet in the Pacific and possibly a futile one if the Dutch oil wells and refineries were put out of business.
Discussion suffered from two weaknesses. The Japanese military leaders were not rational regarding their interests and purposes, which an oil embargo
20 Assistant Secretary of State
would threaten. Furthermore, our discussions were not analytical or quantitatively precise, but rambling and argumentative. Mr. Hull had the mind of a debater rather than of a judge. He thought orally and aurally, stating all sides of a question and setding on the one that appealed to him as most convincing. He was helped in deciding what he thought by hearing what he said. Although the words had not been thought of, I was a "hawk" and each Sunday, wholly without result, battled the "doves" in the seminar.
3. THE YEAR WE HELD OUR BREATH
AGONY OF IRRESOLUTION
Arthur schlesinger, jr., has written of President Roosevelt that the "more serious complaint against him was his weakness for postponement." So it seemed to me in 1941. Schlesinger adds: "Yet his caution was always within an assumption of constant advance."^ This, also, is true; but the advance in 1941 was agonizingly slow while hazards mounted and even preparations lagged. Certainly the man down the line cannot grasp all the factors that the Commander in Chief must weigh, but he is not called upon to do so. His is not the duty to lead. Over the years I have been impressed by how often political leaders have misjudged the people's willingness to follow a strong lead. The repeal of prohibition was a cause looking for a leader until Dwight Morrow showed the way. Colonel Stimson tells us that on April 22, 1941, he cautioned the President "on the necessity of his taking the lead and that without a lead on his part it was useless to expect the people would voluntarily take the initiative in letting him know whether or not they would follow him if he did take the lead."-
Two other friends in the Cabinet, Henry Morgenthau and Harold Ickes, took the same view, and constantly presssed for such action as lay immediately within our power to impede the axis, to aid its victims, and to prepare ourselves for the inevitable hostilities which Colonel Stimson predicted. Yet it was easy enough to see why the President delayed involvement. He still remembered the storm in 1937 over his Chicago speech proposing to "quarantine" the dictators. In the 1940 campaign he had gone far to promise the voters that their sons would not be sent abroad to fight foreign wars. Our military posture was weak and our armament industry, despite the "arsenal of democracy" speech in December 1940, largely nonexistent. Controversy still raged between the America Firsters and the William Allen White Committee to Defend America by Aiding the Allies. The draft was unpopular. Many in the army were chalking up the motto, "O.H.I.O."—"over the hill in October," when under existing law the draftees' term of service would end. Before this, the House on August 12 extended the draft law by the slim margin of one vote. Walter Lippmann a few days earlier had entitled his column, "The Case for a Smaller Army."
Looking back, one can hardly doubt that by the spring of 1941 the American people were ready for a stronger lead toward intervention.'' But President Roosevelt was not looking back. His crystal ball of the future was very clouded. General Marshall used to say that the rarest gift the gods ever give to man is the
capacity for decision. At the top there are no easy choices. All are between evils, the consequences of which are hard to judge. Unfortunately, the capacity to decide does not descend in pentecostal fashion upon every occupant of the White House. But if President Roosevelt lacked decisiveness in the degree his successor possessed it, he had a sense of direction in which he constantly advanced. It seemed to those in the government whose views I shared that our most useful function was to increase, so far as we could, the rate of that advance. This effort was to have a wholly unexpected result.
INSTRUMENTS OF DECISION
The two most beckoning salients at the time for a Washington warrior were those of economic warfare and economic aid. Economic warfare was then very much in favor and fashion due to the efforts of two young people at the British Embassy, Miss Mary Craig McGeachy, a Canadian, and Noel Hall, an English don serving as British Minister for War Trade. One gathered that their activities were more stirring than James Bond's of a later day and their ministry potent enough to strangle Hitler's Europe. Everyone in Washington "wanted in" on economic warfare, and soon nearly everyone had a share. By the end of July 1941 an Economic Defense Board under the chairmanship of Vice President Henry Wallace included representatives of State, Treasury, War, Navy, and Commerce (which, through Secretary Jesse Jones, included the Reconstruction Finance Corporation). At first the board was nothing more than an interdepartmental committee where differences were aired and rarely composed. When Mr. Hull tired of it, I represented State. Later, Henry Wallace appointed Milo Perkins as Executive Director, acquired staff, powers, and money, and went to work in earnest. But that long story of internecine warfare with State must wait.
Meanwhile, two other potent instruments for helping friends and harming foes were being forged—furnishing supplies to our friends by lend-lease and withholding them from foes by financial freezing orders. Both came out of the Treasury. Henry Morgenthau was the most dynamic character in Washington; he had passion. His description of the kind of man he wanted hired was: "Does he want to lick this fellow Hitler . . . , that is what I want to know. . . . Does [he] hate Hitler's guts."^ Henry did.
Early in January, when I was still in private practice, Morgenthau called me in to work with his General Counsel, Edward H. Foley, Jr., on the lend-lease bill about to go to Congress and numbered—to confuse the opposition—H.R. 1776. Hardly were we established in our corner rooms in the State Department when in March I was asked to draft the first lend-lease agreements. The British agreement raised most of the problems with which we would become familiar over the years to come. It dragged on for interminable months, but brought me two more cherished friendships—one with the British Ambassador, Edward Halifax, the other with Maynard Keynes—and ever-increasing involvement with allied supply problems. I will come back to it after turning to foreign funds control, which touched off the big event of 1941.
To begin with, this subject should not have been a concern of mine. The "coordination of financial questions with questions of major policy" was by departmental ukase within Adolf Berle's jurisdiction. Again it was Henry Morgenthau who got me involved. "There was no one at the State Department," he said at the time, "with whom he could talk candidly except for Dean Ach-eson."^ There was no one at all with whom I could talk—sympathetically. From top to bottom our Department, except for our corner of it, was against Henry Morgenthau's campaign to apply freezing controls to axis countries and their victims.
Freezing controls stemmed from the Trading with the Enemy Act of 1917. Under it the President could forbid whole categories of transactions that he found beneficial to any enemy. These might range from withdrawing or transferring funds from a bank to buying or selling anything or issuing any document relating to any of these transactions. An order could block them all unless specifically permitted by license. In some instances general licenses permitted whole categories of acts; in others, specific licenses might be required for each separate transaction. The authority to issue these orders was a powerful weapon.
Throughout 1940 Morgenthau pressed to have freezing controls extended to Germany and Italy, but the President and the Secretary of State refused to move. The policy remained one of protecting the victims of aggression against the theft of their American assets by freezing them, but permitting the aggressors free use of theirs. The State Department and the White House, worrying from different points of view, saw anything more as unneutral, as, indeed, it would have been.
In February 1941, returning to the battle, Morgenthau again made no headway. In April I urged him to have another try at moving Mr. Hull, but found him reluctant. By June, Hitler's virtual conquest of all Europe had undermined Mr. Hull's position; and on the fourteenth the President, without dissent in his Cabinet, extended freezing controls to all countries on the continent of Europe. Since my own views and those of the Department now happily coincided, so far as Europe was concerned, I became the Department's representative on the State-Treasury-Justice policy committee (known as the Foreign Funds Committee) with Edward Foley of Treasury and Francis Shea of Justice.
THE BATTLE OVER POLICY TOWARD JAPAN
The committee could now concentrate its attention on the control of Japanese assets. The Secretary continued to be opposed, but Welles and some others were sympathetic although watchful of the White House. Secretary Ickes gave strong support from his key post of Petroleum Administrator. Morgenthau, while in favor, did not lead as he had in the case of Europe. Leadership ultimately came from the President.
To the principal antagonists over policy toward Japan, Secretaries Hull and Ickes, the issue was tightening the limited embargo on oil. In late June and during July the views of all participants were shaken by Hitler's attack on
the Soviet Union. Would Japan move north against Siberia as Hitler urged or south against Indochina and Indonesia, where raw materials beckoned? On July 2 the Japanese Government called up a million men; on the twenty-fifth it announced a protectorate over Indochina.
Meanwhile, the United States hesitated on the brink of action. When it did act on the twenty-sixth, it is by no means clear who intended to do what. Mr. Hull, tired and ill, had gone off to White Sulphur Springs. On the seventeenth he telephoned Welles but, finding him out, talked with me. It was a crucial talk. We should find out, he said, what the Japanese Government had in mind, whether it was "going to stay hooked up with Hider's program of conquest." If so, we should put obstacles in its way by helping Chinese and French-Indochinese resistance, if there was any, and by economic restrictions on Japan. He wanted what he described as "a general tightening up, but always short of becoming involved in war with Japan." He thought that the main Japanese thrust would be southward into Southeast Asia and the East Indies. At this point Welles came in, took over the phone, and was told the same thing. We agreed that Mr. Hull was making progress.
The next day Welles attended a Cabinet meeting and reported the probable and imminent Japanese move into Indochina. When Morgenthau asked the President what he would do in response to it, the President reiterated his opposition to an embargo on oil as likely to drive the Japanese on to Indonesia. Welles suggested freezing Japanese assets and the President seemed to agree.
Welles's suggestion was, of course, far from clear. It could have been an alternative to an embargo or regarded as the same thing, depending on how it was administered. Similarly, it could or could not be within Mr. Hull's telephoned prescription for action. Its very ambiguity could well have made it the sort of response to the Japanese that would appeal to both FDR and his Secretary, giving the appearance of action without carrying specific or irrevocable commitment. In today's jargon, it would seem to "preserve all the options."
Welles told Stanley Hornbeck, Adviser on Political Relations, and me to prepare the freezing order, the idea being to restrict exports of petroleum products to "normal quantities and low-octane grades." The drafting devolved upon my small group and our Treasury friends. By July 21 we had prepared a simple freezing order, merely adding Japan and China, aggressor and victim, to the general order promulgated a month earlier, and a proposed policy paper strictly limiting exports of oil, cotton, and other goods to be paid for by equivalent imports of silk. On instruction, we informed the British of the proposed action, asking what that government might do. They expected it to "tighten controls."
At a Cabinet meeting on the twenty-third the President, brushing aside objections, authorized the freezing order as soon as complementary action could be worked out with the British and the Dutch East Indies and our military commanders could be alerted.^ The policy paper was put aside, since the President and Welles agreed that we should feel our way along in administering the order until we got a sense of Japanese reaction to it.
The Dutch bravely (for they were, or thought they were, in the most exposed position) acted with us. In the Hght of our new orders, I would have to report to the British a more vague and cautious policy than I had outlined two days before. The opportunity came when the British Minister, Neville Butler, and Noel Hall came in on July 23 to tell me how stalwart the British were prepared to be. They had recommended to the dominions, the Netherlands Government, and the Free French that they follow the British in freezing Japanese and Chinese assets. The British export policy would probably duplicate ours, as I had forecast it, permitting only such exports as were needed to pay for strategic materials from Japan. The new instructions from above required me to reverse engines at this point. I had, I said, perhaps given the wrong impression. We looked forward to reaching that result but not in one step. We would first observe the effect of the freezing order and act in the light of developments, keeping the British informed and giving them ample notice of intended action. This they thought would provide opportunity for consultation with us and the dominions. A near fumble due to a faulty pass had been recovered.^
On July 25, the day before issuance of the freezing order, the White House released a statement of the President "speaking informally" to the Volunteer Participation Committee, volunteers for civilian-defense activities. FDR was at his best, making policy clearer than truth itself. He spoke of the "apparent anomaly" of curtailing domestic consumption of gasoline while thousands of tons of it were being sent from the West Coast to Japan "and we are helping Japan in what looks like an act of aggression."
All right. Now the answer is a very simple one. There is a world war going on, and has been for some time—nearly two years. One of our efforts, from the very beginning, was to prevent the spread of that world war in certain areas where it hadn't started. One of those areas is a place called the Pacific Ocean—one of the largest areas of the earth. There happened to be a place in the South Pacific where we had to get a lot of things ....
... So it was essential for Great Britain [tool that we try to keep the peace down there in the South Pacific.
All right. And now here is a nation called Japan. Whether they had at that time aggressive purposes to enlarge their empire southward, they didn't have any oil of their own up in the north. Now, if we cut the oil off, they probably would have gone down to the Dutch East Indies a year ago, and you would have had war.
Therefore, there was—you might call—a method in letting this oil go to Japan, with the hope—and it has worked for two years—of keeping war out of the South Pacific for our own good, for the good of the defense of Great Britain, and the freedom of the seas.
You people can help to enlighten the average citizen who wouldn't hear of that, or doesn't read the papers carefully, or listen to the radio carefully—to understand what some of these apparent anomalies mean.^
Whatever help the Volunteer Participation Committee may have received, the Foreign Funds Committee was not enlightened on administering the President's policy of no policy. Therefore, when Foley, Shea, and I met with the press on July 26, we were understandably reticent. The press interpreted this as meaning that the order was a paper tiger and portended no substantial change
in flow of oil to Japan. Like everyone else, they were wrong: it portended a great change. Their error came from looking in the wrong direction. The change was to come from a wholly unforeseen cause—the action of the Japanese themselves. At this time three Japanese ships were approaching San Francisco. Orders from Japan halted them outside our territorial waters and directed them to discharge their passengers there and return to Japan. Two did so; the third, the Tatuta Maru, lacked sufficient bunkers for the return journey and came in on assurances that bunkers would be licensed. Once she was in, private parties filed a law suit (called a libel in admiralty) against her, which would keep her in unless a bond took her place. A bond would require a license. Thus the Tatuta Maru, like the USS Maine and Jenkins' ear, became the instrument of great events. Through the Tatuta Maru the Japanese tested the freezing order.
The first policy guide to our committee came in a late-July talk I had with Welles. The happiest solution with respect to Japanese trade, he told me, would be for the Foreign Funds Committee to take no action on Japanese applications. We immediately took three positions to discourage applications. First, we would not issue advisory opinions; specific applications must be made to apply specific funds to payment for specific purposes. Second, we were averse to licensing blocked funds when we believed that secret funds in the United States or Latin America were available. Third, we would prefer to have exports paid for with funds earned by imports. In any event, each transaction must be carefully considered on its individual merits. To our surprise and pleasure, these proposals met with unanimous support for the first time within our government.
It also mystified our allies, whose representatives, as well as the Japanese, constantly sought enlightenment. The Governor General of the Indies stated his perplexity: while our export policy appeared to contemplate licenses for certain quantities and grades of petroleum, under freezing control means of payment did not seem to be available. What was the policy? Might he have a "clear statement"? After careful coordination with Messrs. Hull, Hornbeck, and Maxwell M. Hamilton, Chief of the Division of Far Eastern Affairs, I wrote out a statement which had their approval, asked Baron (Pim) van Boetzelaer, the Netherlands Counselor, to call, and read it to him on September 22. Pim van Boetzelaer was and is a cherished friend and, had he not been so experienced a diplomatist and able to interpret language intended to cloak ideas, would have been entitled to a more candid answer. But the situation was still too delicate for complete candor and the ultimate truth too unformed for statement.
The fact was, I told him, that no shipment of petroleum products had gone to Japan since the freezing order. Although three export licenses for small amounts had been granted some time ago, no action had been taken to move them, because the Japanese refused to turn in hidden cash as payment and no satisfactory alternative had been agreed upon. Our government expected to continue in the same way, with the same results. Should anything occur to warrant reconsideration of this policy, we would discuss it with the Netherlands. The inarticulate major premise was that whether or not we had a policy, we had a state of affairs; the conclusion, that until further notice it would continue. I stressed Mr. Hull's wish that this information be held as closely as possible
and that nothing be said ascribing any particular policy to the United States Government.^ '
A few days later the same statement was read to Noel Hall of the British Embassy. United States policy was then set, though not stated.
The indefatigable Sadao Iguchi, Counselor of the Japanese Embassy, got a more dusty answer from me and the Treasury. Two more Japanese ships, tankers without bunkers, had entered West Coast ports. The Tatuta Maru had discharged her cargo and was no longer held by the libel. After some bickering she had been given bunkers and a ballast cargo of asphalt and sent home. Talk went on about paying for an oil cargo for the tankers. The use of frozen funds was rejected. Replenishment of the Yokohama Specie Bank's account with its funds in Latin America was found impracticable because bank examiners were engaged in a lengthy examination of its condition. We had no desire to delay the tankers; bunkers would be made available and payment excepted from usual policy. They went home without cargo. On August 5 Japan announced withdrawal of its merchant marine from the American trade. The use of funds for purposes other than exports ran into a variety of difficulties, such as the refusal of reciprocity in Japan and the fact that other funds were available. On November 22 I reported to Mr. Hull that the freezing controls had brought a great stillness over trade and financial relations between Japan on one side and the United States, the British Commonwealth, and Netherlands Indies on the other.^'^ Stillness had only two weeks more to last.
LEND-LEASE
If our corner in Old State had seemed quiet in February, it was no longer so in July. Not only were we deep in foreign funds control, but in the intervening months had become more and more involved in lend-lease arrangements with the British. In late June we acquired another client when Hitler attacked the Soviet Union.
As soon as the bill authorizing lend-lease was passed, the President decided that he would administer operations through Harry Hopkins as his deputy and with a Cabinet Advisory Committee of Cordell Hull, Henry Morgenthau, Henry Stimson (War), and Frank Knox (Navy), a typical Roosevelt prescription for confusion. Without money, the authority granted by Congress was empty. Plans for an appropriation began amid hurt feelings, annoyance with the British, and the usual confusion in policy. Morgenthau, who had carried the burden of the battle, resented the introduction of Hopkins and the Advisory Committee and complained about the British foot-dragging in the sale of their American securities to pay what they could on war purchases. This had been promised to Congress as evidence of Britain's good faith and need. The President wanted a lend-lease agreement with the British, based on the conception not of a loan of money but of goods, as soon as possible.
The President's ideas about the lend-lease agreement were not intended, so I believed, to be taken literally. If the parentage of lend-lease had been stated in the language of the Thoroughbred Stud Book, it would have been "by Polit-
ical Necessity out of Poetic License." The idea of returning, after the war, bilHons of dollars' worth of goods was only a little less absurd than paying billions of dollars which the British would have to earn by selling goods and services. Arms and ships in existence at the end of the war could be returned if we wanted a disarmed ally, but the likelihood was all the other way. After Dunkirk, Churchill in one of his exuberant moods had declared, "Give us the tools and we will finish the job." That was an exaggeration, of course; Britain could not finish the job. But the hire-purchase of the tools, as the British would have put it, was their use in the common task and the promise of such later cooperation as one nation may honorably give another.
Both treasuries were slow in understanding this. Henry Morgenthau was a brave man in the critical days of 1941, not because he was one of those rare creatures who do not know fear—he was naturally timid, nervous, and apprehensive of Congress and of what he called "going out on a limb"—but because he overcame his fears. However, he did not want to go farther than immediate necessity demanded. My ideas, he thought, would prejudice the appropriation. This difference in approach persisted to the war's end. When, as always happens, the original Cabinet committee descended to what arrogant subordinates called the "working level"—Harry White (Treasury), John J. McCloy (War), and myself (State)—the battle continued over the level of British gold and dollar reserves which might be accumulated under lend-lease. McCloy and I would accuse the Treasury of envisaging a victory where both enemies and allies were prostrate—enemies by military action, allies by bankruptcy. We finally worked the British reserves up from rock bottom to double the Treasury's minimum, until, like Sisyphus, our labors were undone when President Truman made what he called his greatest mistake: in August 1945, upon the advice of Foreign Economic Administrator Leo Crowley and Under Secretary of State Joseph Grew, he terminated lend-lease. However, I am far ahead of my story.
In March 1941 the dispute over a British agreement was shelved for the moment by the necessity of getting an appropriation sufficient to begin operations. The congressional hearings and the bill passed without casualties. But more delay awaited us. Harry Hopkins was slow in getting started, baffled by the intricacy of financial and procurement problems, and hampered by fending off almost daily exhaustion of British reserves and by assembling a staff. Some time went by before an able and energetic group under the direction of Oscar Cox got these problems sorted out, an organization established, and lend-lease under way. On August 28 Hopkins turned its administration over to Edward R. Stettinius, Jr., retaining only an unofficial supervisory role.
Meanwhile, during this period of lend-lease's gestation, my own labors centered about the British agreement and discussions with our new client, the Soviet Union. In May the President prodded Mr. Hull to press on with a temporary agreement with the British dealing with the broad principles involved. The latter charged me with responsibility for a draft. A large group in the Department produced a crop of ideas, which a smaller group—Herbert Feis, the Economic Adviser; Harry Hawkins, Chief of the Division of Commercial Trea-
ties and Agreements; John Hickerson, Assistant Chief of the European Division; and I—winnowed over with Mr. Hull. By mid-July we had a draft.
Earlier in the month John Maynard Keynes, then in Washington as a representative of Mr. Churchill on lend-lease matters, called on me. Keynes was not only one of the most delightful and engaging men I have ever known but also, in a true sense of the word, one of the most brilliant. His many-faceted and highly polished mind sparkled and danced with light. But not all felt his charm; to some he appeared arrogant. His call might have given me that impression, but it did not. He had come, he said, at the President's request to inform me of a talk he and Lord Halifax had had with the President about a temporary lend-lease agreement, so that we might get on with drafting. They had ranged over some not unfamiliar ideas, which he recounted. Within a few days he gave me a draft he had already prepared. As I noted at the time, it was "wholly impossible," providing "merely that lend-lease aid should be extended; that the British should return what was practicable for them to return; that no obligation should be created; and that they would be glad to talk about other matters."^^ Keynes did not appear to think it unusual that I should receive instructions from the President via the British Embassy. I was sure that FDR, as well as I, got some amusement from the idea too.
By the end of July our draft had been approved by the Secretary and the President and given to Keynes for discussion. It provoked plenty. The draft was simple and amazingly liberal. The United States would furnish the British with such defense articles, services, and information as the President authorized. The British would contribute to our defense what they were able to. (This provision proved immensely helpful when our great army was assembled in England for the invasion of Europe.) The British would not transfer to others anything furnished by us without our consent; they would protect and compensate American patent owners; they would return articles in existence at the end of the war if we asked for them. What they might furnish us would be taken into account in any final settlement. So far—with adequate explanations—there was no problem. Then followed Article VII, which precipitated six months of discussion.
Twenty years of painful experience with the war debts of 1914-18 had dictated an admirable opening provision. The terms of a final lend-lease settlement should "be such as not to burden commerce between the two countries but to promote mutually advantageous economic relations between them and the betterment of world-wide economic relations." So far so good; here was a blow struck for the Hull liberal commercial policies open to all. Then came the apple of discord. In addition to promoting good, the final settlement should prohibit evil, or what Mr. Hull thought was evil. It should ^'provide against discrimination in either the United States or the United Kingdom against the importation of any product originating in the other country."^^ This, too, was the purest essence of Hull doctrine and boded ill for imperial preference tariffs set up in Great Britain as the reaction of the Ottawa agreements of 1932 against the infamous United States tariff act of 1930.
When Keynes had read this, he asked whether the paragraph referred to imperial preferences and exchange and trade control's as practiced between the wars. I said that it did, upon which he burst into a speech such as only he could make. The British could not "make such a commitment in good faith"; "it would require an imperial conference"; "it saddled upon the future an ironclad formula from the Nineteenth Century"; "it contemplated the . . . hopeless task of returning to a gold standard"; and so on.
I pointed out the paragraph did not ask for unilateral promises from the British, nor did it by any word or phrase seek to impose rigid or unworkable formulas upon the future. No man was less likely than the President to want this. Keynes's statements seemed to me "extreme and unjustified." Then, as coldly as I could—which I have been told is fairly cold—I added that "the purpose of Article VII was to provide a commitment, which it should not be hard for the British to give, that, after the emergency was over and after they had received vast aid from this country, they would not regard themselves free to take any measures they chose against the trade of this country but would work out in cooperation with this country measures which would eliminate discrimination and would provide for mutually fair and advantageous rela-tions."i3
At this he cooled off and spoke wisely about a postwar problem that he foresaw far more clearly than I did—our great capacity to export, the world's need for our goods, and the problems of payment. He mentioned the division of opinion in England about postwar trade between the free traders, the advocates of a managed economy, and a group who leaned toward imperial policies. At the end he thought us agreed on broad policies but in need of more clarification.
The next day, clearly unhappy about our talk, he wrote me from New York on his way home. I should not think because of his "caviling at the word 'discrimination' that the excellence and magnanimity of the first part of the Article VII and of the document as a whole had gone overlooked." He would do what he could to interpret the President's mind. Lord Halifax was due in London soon and would help. We must not expect an early reply. Then, in his own inimitable style, he went on:
My so strong reaction against the word "discrimination" is the result of my feeling so passionately that our hands must be free to make something new and better of the postwar world; not that I want to discriminate in the old bad sense of that word—on the contrary, quite the opposite.
But the word calls up, and must call up—for that is what it means strictly interpreted—all the old lumber, most-favored-nation clause and the rest which was a notorious failure and made such a hash of the old world. We know also that won't work. It is the clutch of the dead, or at least the moribund, hand. If it was accepted it would be cover behind which all the unconstructive and truly reactionary people of both our countries would shelter. We must be free to work out new and better arrangements which will win in substance and not in shadow what the President and you and others really want. As I know you won't dispute this, we shall be able to work something out. Meanwhile forgive my vehemence which has deep causes in my hopes for the future. This is my subject. I know, or partly know, what I want. I know, and clearly know, what I fear.^"*
In August and September we were diverted from the problems of Article VII by the tense days of the Japanese freezing order and by the thorny and recurring difficulties arising from the use of lend-lease materials, or similar materials of British origin, in British export trade. In late September Ambassador John G. Winant pressed Foreign Minister Eden for a response to our July draft. This was stimulated by my appearance before a House committee hearing our request for a supplemental appropriation of just under six billion dollars for lend-lease. The committee had asked what we had done toward agreeing on "the terms and conditions upon which any such foreign government receives any aid." It received with remarkable patience my verbose report that we were working on it. Action was imperative. Eden promised that Halifax would return with an answer.
He returned without it, due to disagreements within the Cabinet. A few weeks later he asked me to call, and on October 17, 1941, showed me a document.^^ He did not want to present it formally but in the most informal manner and as a highly tentative suggestion. A glance was enough to show that the insertion of some slippery words and phrases had robbed of all meaning our prohibition of discrimination against the importation of American goods into Britain. Instead, their proposed settlement would commit the two countries "each working within the limits of their governing economic conditions [an escape clause large enough for a Sherman tank] ... to securing as part of a general plan [that is, British obligations in return for lend-lease to be conditioned upon, say, Latin America's accepting the same] the progressive attainment of a balanced international economy, [here were two Humpty Dumpty words which could mean whatever one wished them to mean] the avoidance of harmful discriminations, [harmful discriminations, I said to Halifax, are always the other fellow's discriminations, never one's own] and generally the economic objectives" of the Atlantic Charter of the preceding August. The countries would begin to talk ways and means in the near future.
Hawkins, who was with me, and I did our best to assure Lord Halifax that our draft if accepted would not itself repeal tariff legislation; it was an agreement to work together to bring about the elimination of discriminatory legislation. But we did not seem to lessen his worries. Feis feared that we might stir up a crisis among the Commonwealth countries over the Ottawa preferences. This seemed to me highly unlikely. Australia and New Zealand were far too concerned in enlisting our protection to quarrel with us over postwar tariffs. Mr. Hull concurred and advised the President, who promptly agreed, that the British draft was wholly inadequate.
In fairness to Maynard Keynes it would be wrong to leave the impression that he had inspired the haggling over details of draftsmanship to gain some narrow advantage for Britain. He was, I think, genuinely doubtful about our ability to see clearly or far into the postwar world or to control by international arrangements, however cunningly devised, forces that might be let loose there. He was distrustful of supposedly self-operating mechanisms. For instance, if alive today, he would not be as surprised as many are at the use to which General de Gaulle put the Common Market—that is, as an exclusionary device
to direct European trade in the interest of France and against that of the United States, Britain, and other countries. In this Mr. Hull, for different reasons, might be in agreement. Similarly, Keynes would, I suggest, point out that some of the rigidities built into the Bretton Woods agreements by the Morgenthau-White doctrines have increased our difficulty in correcting present shortcomings in the Bretton Woods system that contribute to our much-discussed balance-of-pay-ments troubles. These matters would come up again three years later, in the summer of 1944.
At the time, however, I was not disturbed by such far-reaching thoughts or doubts. In November, drawing in representatives of lend-lease and of economic warfare, we obtained the President's and Mr. Hull's approval of a new draft. It used some of the British language to broaden the conception of a postwar economic settlement but kept the obligations clear. On December 2 Herbert Feis and I presented it to Lord Halifax, explaining that it represented the careful and deliberate conclusions of the whole government as approved by the President.^'^
After the highly acceptable beginning that the final settlement should not burden commerce but should better it, we put in a new provision about how to better it. This was to be done by an agreement between the two countries, open to all others sympathetic with the ideas, "directed to the expansion, by appropriate international and domestic measures, of production, employment, and the exchange and consumption of goods." In other words, both countries would agree on measures to bring about an expanding economy. We would invite all to join us who would. In the setting of this aim—the increase of production, employment, trade, and consumption—all forms of discrimination were to be eliminated and tariffs and other trade barriers reduced. We accepted British references to the Atlantic Charter and early discussion of procedures.
Here, we explained to Lord Halifax and Redvers Opie, we had tried to dispel British fears that we were seeking to impose on them either unilateral obligations or the moribund hand of the nineteenth century. We were embracing the Keynesian ideas of an expanding economy. If it needed to be managed, let us do it together and not separately.
Mr. Hull cabled Ambassador Winant to urge speedy acceptance upon the Prime Minister. Lord Halifax made the same recommendation. Then began two months of blindman's buflf. Winant found Churchill absorbed in the loss of HMS Prince of Wales and HMS Repulse off. Malaya and his coming trip to Washington, and was referred to the Chancellor of the Exchequer. He in turn passed the matter back to Halifax to be taken up with Churchill when he arrived in Washington. Mr. Hull urged FDR to do the same. The great man came and went, but no one in either capital seemed able to find out what had happened. In January I asked Mr. Hull, as a matter of great urgency, since more appropriations hearings were coming up, to find out. He told me to do it myself; on January 29 I did so.
The President told me that on several occasions during Churchill's visit he (FDR) had brought up the lend-lease agreement but that the Prime Minister showed a strong desire to postpone discussions and to have them go through someone else. The President had not insisted further in view of the pressure of
other matters. He now wanted a speedy conclusion of the matter. In response to my report that the British constantly asked whether Article VII and the State Department's view of its importance and urgency really represented the President's ideas, he said most emphatically that they did and that I should say so. My memorandum to him ended with two numbered recommendations: (i) that we make another effort to get the British to accept our latest draft, and (2) if the British continued to object to the reference to "discrimination," we drop the whole article and merely say that the parties would promptly discuss the whole matter anew. This would leave us as well as the British free to adopt any attitudes which we might wish. The President took my memorandum and wrote at the end of it: "I strongly hope the British will accept (1)—because (2) leaves them in a much more difficult future economic situation. FDR"
Finally, when I pointed out that hearings on the next year's appropriations bill were only a week away and that four months ago we had told Congress we were hopeful of an early agreement with the British, he said that we should make clear that the delay was not on our side. The next day I reported all this to Halifax, as instructed, showing him the President's note and saying that the Department would no longer assume responsibility for delay. From then on it would be clear that the British had only themselves to blame. He agreed to do all he could, adding sadly that the Cabinet clung stubbornly to the belief that the mere signing of the agreement itself abrogated imperial preferential tarififs.
I had hoped that this was the end, but the lion had one more roar in it. On February 6, 1942, the Cabinet met and, as reported by Eden to Winant, confirmed Halifax's worst fears. They were unwilling, he said, "to barter Empire preference in exchange for . . . planes, tanks, guns, goods, et cetera, because of the pohtical repercussion that they believed would result."^" We must agree that "discrimination" as used in Article VII did not apply to special arrangements between members of the same commonwealth or federation such as the British Commonwealth or the United States of America. When Halifax presented this view to Feis and me the next day, we turned it down flat and told him we saw no use in further discussion. He did not dissent.
We reported the stalemate to Welles and the President. Winant spent the weekend with the Prime Minister and talked Article VII and imperial preferences. Then Hopkins came to see me with the draft of a telegram from "FDR to a former Naval Person." We worked it over; Welles thought the result an improvement, and the President fired it off. He was not, he said, asking for any advance commitments on Empire preference. He wanted to make it clear that nothing was excluded from conversations before we sat down at the table.^^
If this did not illumine the subject, as Professor Whitehead said of a lecture by Lord Russell on higher mathematics, it did not deepen the surrounding darkness. At any rate, it worked. The British signed.
I have gone into this episode at greater length than its inherent importance warrants because it illustrates a problem that was to occur later in attempts to win British cooperation in broad postwar plans. The qualities which produce the dogged, unbeatable courage of the British, personified at the time in Winston Churchill, can appear in other settings as stubbornness bordering on stupidity.
These qualities, so admirable in the war, lost the British great opportunities in the 1950s.
HELP TO RUSSIA
Hitler's attack on the Soviet Union brought a reversal of policy easier to make in theory than in practice. Before June 22 it had been one of coolness to the point of hostility, but not so hostile as "to drive Stalin further into the arms of Hitler"—whatever that then-popular cliche meant. It furnished little guidance on whether to grant or deny a specific export license. The safest course had been to stall them all. As late as June 14 the Soviet Union had been added to the list of countries subject to the freezing order, and had protested.
Constantine A. Oumansky, the Soviet Ambassador, belonged to the new school of offensive Soviet diplomats. They never learned the manners of the old Russian Foreign Office, as had Chicherin, Litvinov, and Maisky. The new men cultivated boorishness as a method of showing their contempt for the capitalist world, with which they wished minimum contact. Vishinsky was a natural blackguard, but cultivated and amusing; Gromyko's gaucheness was relieved by a grim, sardonic humor. Oumansky had no redeeming qualities. To frustrate him with icy politeness had given me considerable pleasure. So it was difficult to reverse course and, as policy cleared, to begin helping instead of hindering Russian procurement in the United States. When Oumansky was killed in a plane crash of suspicious cause on his way to a post as Ambassador to Mexico, we felt no sense of loss.
The first lend-lease agreement with the Russians throws some light on our general expectations of the course of events. It took the form of an exchange of letters between the President and Stalin by which we agreed to furnish aid up to a billion dollars which the Russians would repay without interest over a ten-year period beginning five years after the war's end.^^
In order to get needed goods moving to the Soviet Union, Welles established a small group under me, directed first by Charles Curtis and later by another friend, Charles Bunn, a lawyer from Minneapolis. We were wholly inadequate in prestige and knowledge in dealing with the new wartime bureaucracy of Washington and the armed services and the British supply missions, which through membership on the joint boards had wormed their way into the very allocation procedure itself. Our clients, too, were clumsy and difficult. Not daring to depart in the smallest particular from their instructions, they had no flexibility, no feel for the possible. By the end of the year, admitting defeat, I was glad to give up the struggle and become a member of the President's Soviet Protocol Committee, which Harry Hopkins gathered together to hear orders from the White House about what must go to the Soviet Union.
SUNDAY, DECEMBER 7
On Sunday, December 7, Archie and Ada MacLeish drove out to our Maryland farm north of Washington to get some exercise by clearing up fallen timber in our woods and to share a picnic lunch. He was then Librarian of Con-
gress and head of the "Office of Facts and Figures," FDR's ingenious name for our foreign propaganda bureau. The MacLeishes had to get back to town for an afternoon appointment and left us soon after lunch. In a few minutes Archie was running down the hill from the house shouting, "The Japanese have attacked Pearl Harbor. Turn on your car radio." Then he was gone.
We soon followed him, listening to reports of unbelievable disaster as we drove. I dropped off at the Department. On the second floor south little groups stood about the corridor, talking almost in whispers, doing nothing. Mr. Hull was shut up with a few intimates, still, it was reported, in a towering rage. The Japanese Ambassador, Admiral Kichisaburo Nomura, and their special ambassador, Saburo Kurusu, had left him only a couple of hours before. Each group added its bit of gossip. Mr. Hull had reportedly castigated the departing envoys in native Tennesseean as "scoundrels and piss-ants." War had or had not been declared. Germany would or would not join Japan. The axis plan was or was not to involve us in the Pacific leaving the European partners a free hand to finish the European war first; and so on. Our Petroleum Adviser, Max Thornburg, reported having seen terrifying telegraphed photographs of our shattered fleet. When no one seemed to have any use or orders for us, the groups dissolved and we went home.
Although, happily, we did not know it, that Sunday afternoon's experience was an augury of the Department's coming role in the war years.
4. RETROSPECT
Some time went by before I discovered how little I had been taken into the confidence of the government I served.This was to continue throughout my time as Assistant Secretary. I have no complaint; there was nothing personal about it. The economic side was simply "below stairs" in Old State and, for the most part, kept to its useful but humbler tasks and role. For instance, I knew nothing about an atomic weapon until the bombs were exploded over Hiroshima and Nagasaki—although later I was to know a good deal. Similarly, I knew little, as we tightened the economic blockade of Japan, of the tension it was producing there, nothing of the Japanese messages we were reading or what they portended, and nothing of the agony of indecision that gripped the Administration as Japanese military forces moved southward in Indochina toward southern Siam and Singapore. Even if I had, it is doubtful whether it would have changed my views: first, because those in the Cabinet with whom I most agreed—Colonel Stimson, Harry Hopkins, and later the President—did not change theirs; and, second, because even the most cautious, including Mr. Hull, were unwilling to back down from positions taken. Only retreat would have affected events.
I suggested earlier that everyone in the Department—and in the government generally—misread Japanese intentions. This misreading was not of what the Japanese military government proposed to do in Asia, not of the hostility our embargo would excite, but of the incredibly high risks General Tojo would assume to accomplish his ends. No one in Washington realized that he and his regime regarded the conquest of Asia not as the accomplishment of an ambition but as the survival of a regime. It was a life-and-death matter to them. They were absolutely unwilling to continue in what they regarded as Japan's precarious position surrounded by great and hostile powers—the United States, the Soviet Union, and a possibly revived and restored China. This is what Ambassador Kurusu meant on December 2 when, in Mr. Welles's words, the Ambassador said to him that "the Japanese people believe that economic measures are a much more effective weapon of war than military measures; that . . . they are being placed under severe pressure by the United States to yield to the American position; and that it is preferable to fight rather than to yield to pressure."^
The day before, at the meeting of the Privy Council which decided on war. General Tojo had described the consequences of submission: "The United States, however, has not shown any sign of concession from its past position. . . . Should Japan submit to her demands, not only would Japan's prestige be entirely destroyed and the solution of the China Affair rendered impossible, but Japan's existence itself would be endangered. It is now clear that Japan's claims
cannot be attained through diplomatic measures."- To General Tojo and the Privy Council Japan's existence meant existence in the larger sense envisaged by her "claims" in the "China Affair." To him the issue was fight or surrender. He no less than Winston Churchill rejected all "reasonable" odds in making that decision.
However faulty American knowledge of Japanese military psychology and her judgment of Japan's intentions may have been, Japanese judgment was far worse. The one course the American people and government could not and would not tolerate was an attack on American territory and the American fleet. The result was bound to be war. This, of course, Tokyo expected. The consequences of war, in view of the vastly preponderant strength of the United States and the temper of our people, were almost certain to be disastrous to Japan. A far wiser and safer course for General Tojo's government, and one within the scope of his policies and premises, would have been a move to obtain the oil of Indonesia by pressure on the Dutch and, if necessary, their removal through a Japanese-instigated-and-supported Indonesian revolution. In Washington the Cabinet and the Army and Navy were all divided about how to respond to an expected move south. Observation and decoded messages reported large troop movements in that direction. Opinion polls reported doubt as to whether Congress or the people would support war to protect foreign colonial possessions in the South Pacific, and certainly any support would hot be unanimous. The armed forces were far from ready and said so. If Singapore and Malaya were left alone, would the British take on a new war? Could they be effective if they did?
Indeed, the move south was Japan's central purpose and real objective, and the Pearl Harbor attack a diversion to protect it.
No greater folly can be imagined, despite the promised support of a German declaration of war. That, too, was colossal folly on Hitler's part. Already in great trouble before Moscow, his best chance to extricate himself from his Russian mistake and still play for hegemony in Europe lay in directing American power to the Asian battle. To betray Japan presented him with no problem. Nevertheless, after four days for thought, on December 11 he declared war against the United States. At last our enemies, with parallel stupidity, resolved our dilemmas, clarified our doubts and uncertainties, and united our people for the long, hard course that the national interest required. Those of us who had been holding our breath while the future of the world hung in balance could breathe once more. Our enemies had identified themselves and their purposes. Our immediate military task was clear; what should be our longer-range political aims and purposes, what were our major difficulties and dangers, remained shrouded in obscurity.
Two aspects of the attack on Pearl Harbor are often confused: the tactical military surprise and the strategic political surprise. A government should, of course, be prepared for both. The former should be much easier to guard against than the latter. I am not competent to discuss our unpreparedness at Pearl Harbor and in any event, Roberta Wohlstetter's superb book, Pearl Harbor,^ makes it unnecessary. The political problem of where among a wide range
of choices an enemy will strike is a different matter. The high command, civil and military, had no doubt in 1941 that an attack—Mr. Hull called it "some deviltry"—was coming. Several spots on Siamese, Malayan, British, and Dutch territory seemed more likely to be struck than any on ours. Of all points, our bastion at Pearl Harbor did not seem a likely target. Nine years later, in June 1950, Korea did not seem the most likely trouble point. In 1941 Ambassador Grew in Tokyo took notable exception to the prevailing opinion; he believed that Pearl Harbor was not only a possible but the probable target. Whether or not the government was negligent in not being prepared for an attack on Pearl Harbor, it was not stupid in not expecting it to fall there. The thesis that the President offered the fleet for sacrifice to bring on a war seems to me utterly preposterous.
If the Army and Navy were unprepared for war, the State Department was no less so. It never did seem to find its place. As I shall relate later, the Secretary's ebbing energy was drained off into that legacy of the nineteenth century, the United Nations; many of us spent inordinate time in bureaucratic warfare either for survival—as it seemed then—or to preserve prerogatives—as it seems now; others did ad hoc jobs in aid of economic warfare and raw-material supply —and did them with professional skill—or, in aid of military operations, such as dealings with the Free French, the antifascist Italians, or the future occupation zones in a defeated Germany, without noticeable brilliance; still others were caught up in preparatory conferences to deal with such postwar problems as food, agriculture, relief, and monetary arrangements. Few made any contribution to the conduct of the war or to the achievement of political purposes through war. Silent leges inter arma. Diplomacy, it seems, was here as silent as law. Yet there was room for something a little more modern and percipient than FDR's adoption of General Grant's "unconditional surrender" or Henry Mor-genthau's conception of Germany as a group of agrarian states. In justice to my colleagues, I must plead as guilty as any of escaping into immediate busywork to keep from the far harder task of peering into a dim future, which, of course, should be one of a diplomatist's main duties.
As I look back upon the period to which I now turn, my memory (perhaps an unfair or incomplete one) is of a department without direction, composed of a lot of busy people working hard and usefully but as a whole not functioning as a foreign office. It did not chart a course to be furthered by the success of our arms, or to aid or guide our arms. Rather it seems to have been adrift, carried hither and yon by the currents of war or pushed about by collisions with more purposeful craft.
5. ECONOMIC WARFARE AT HOME
On MONDAY MORNING, December 8, Washington awoke, a capital at war. The indecisions, hesitations, and doubts of the past year, the pretenses and fum-blings, were gone. Argument over, the country and its capital turned to what Americans like and do best, action. In a few months half a continent and a hundred and thirty million people were transformed into the greatest military power the world had seen. Amid this burst of energy the State Department stood breathless and bewildered like an old lady at a busy intersection during rush hour. All around it vigorous, effective people were purposefully on their way to do jobs that needed doing. Nowhere was this more true than in making and executing plans for economic dealings with friends, enemies, and neutrals all over the world. The object was to corner all useful materials for our side and preclude the enemy from getting them. These were not operations for which State Department officers were trained or fitted, though they reeked of foreign policy.
As we entered the war, these functions, as already suggested, were scattered all over Washington and all over the Department of State. It was inevitable, even in a disorderly administration, that they should be drawn together; it was also important that the State Department should not be cut off from making a contribution to the foreign policy aspects of these decisions and their execution. The British from their experience had made this clear to us, but we had not had their training in Cabinet coordination. Our vigorous Cabinet men—Mor-genthau, Jesse Jones, Henry Wallace—were empire builders, impatient with what seemed to them State Department fussiness and diplomatic obstruction. The result of the conflict of these forces was altogether predictable: more and more the State Department fought desperately for a shrinking place. In this battle it fell to me to champion State—hazardous work, as I nearly got shot by my own side when the Secretary and Breck Long interpreted the struggle as one between radicals and conservatives, classifying me among the former. However, I can say with Abbe Sieyes, when asked what he did during the French Revolution: "I survived."
HENRY WALLACE'S GREAT INVASION
For us in State the Washington war began before we enlisted in the international one, and began with a minor victory to be followed by a crushing defeat. For some time axis subversion in Latin America had been carried on by persons of German, Italian, or Japanese ancestry, some still nationals of those
countries, others claiming citizenship within the western hemisphere. A group under Nelson Rockefeller, Coordinator of Commercial and Cultural Relations Between the American Republics (a title itself in derogation of the State Department's role), had been at work on a list of these people. A presidential order of July 17, 1941, authorized the Secretary of State to publish such a list and keep it current. Persons listed were to be treated under the freezing orders, as were citizens of Germany or Italy. A Division of World Trade Intelligence was created within the State Department with John S. Dickey (later President of Dartmouth), who had prepared the list, as its chief. Henceforth he and I worked together and formed one of the most cherished friendships of my life.
This small step forward was soon offset by a large one backward. I have already described the innocuous first move, the establishment of the Administrator of Export Control, described as "primarily a national defense matter," under which State would provide the machinery for the actual issue of licenses. The Administrator was a genial and pleasant man, Colonel—in a few months. Brigadier General—Russell Maxwell, known affectionately and disrespectfully as Slapsie-Maxie. Export control was not to be his life work. He had little experience in framing policies for trade with two areas of great importance to the Department, Latin America and the European neutrals. We in the Department, therefore, devised a simple and effective method by which we wrote for the Administrator his orders to us determining which export licenses should be granted or denied, and he permitted us broad latitude in interpreting our handiwork. We appeared to have contained the first assault.
At first sight the second assault seemed more dangerous but to seasoned bureaucratic infighters it bore all the earmarks of futility and early demise. Under the chairmanship of Vice President Henry Wallace, most of the Cabinet (State, Treasury, War, Navy, Justice, Agriculture, and Commerce), collectively known as the Board of Economic Warfare—originally christened the Economic Defense Board—were to advise the President on the entire range of international economic, financial, patent, and communication fields, coordinate work of the various departments in these fields, and develop integrated plans for the war and postwar periods. Administration of various activities relating to economic defense, under policies formulated by the board, was, however, to remain with the departments and agencies then charged with it.
While the franchise of the board seemed to absorb all international aspects of economic policy and action, an old inhabitant of the bureaucratic jungle like Mr. Hull knew that Cabinet boards and committees were paper tigers. They made a fine show in a parade but soon dissolved in the rain. Cabinet officers are too busy and too suspicious of one another to join a raid against a colleague. At first the board furnished Mr. Hull with just another grievance against the President over his conduct of foreign affairs. After attending a few meetings, the Secretary of State deputized me "to explain his absence" and substitute for him.
Henry Wallace soon confounded all expectations about the board by a gross departure from the rules of bureaucratic warfare. He introduced into a harmless committee of busy men an executive director in the person of one of the most able, adroit, and energetic administrators whom the war had brought
to Washington. Milo Perkins was Wallace's own importation out of the Southwest into the Agricultural Adjustment Administration. A fighter, imaginative, armed with funds so abundantly available to war agencies, Perkins soon had a large organization and began to act through his own people. Though cast in the role of opponents, he and I soon became warm friends, which we continue to be. Breckinridge Long thought we were both dangerous radicals because we were friends of Felix Frankfurter. Today we are both regarded as far to the right.
In the spring of 1942 under Perkins' skillful management the Board of Economic Warfare took a "great leap forward." A new presidential order hit us a stunning and unexpected blow.^ Arthur Krock wrote with relish in The New York Times of the unforgettable "anguish of Sumner Welles when felled by this sudden blow to the solar plexus" and the "moments when it seemed that . . . Assistant Secretary of State Acheson would never stop vibrating. "-
The order took from Jesse Jones and the Reconstruction Finance Corporation and gave to the board the power and funds to buy abroad materials for production, civilian economy, or denial to the enemy; made it the State Department's adviser on lend-lease agreements; and gave it authority to arrange for reciprocal aid from foreign countries, to "represent the United States Government in dealing with the economic warfare agencies" of allied countries, and to send abroad "technical, engineering, and economic representatives responsible to the Board as the Board may deem necessary." The last three of these grants of authority were direct encroachments upon the most ancient of the State Department's roles and prerogatives—to conduct for the President negotiations with foreign nations and the representation of this country abroad. Before the Second World War the Department had carried on a long and largely successful struggle to transfer into the Foreign Service persons theretofore serving abroad as representatives of other departments—Treasury, Agriculture, Commerce, and (later) Labor. The order of April 13 was a painful, bitter, and humiliating defeat.
Mr. Hull was away when the blow fell. Welles's protests at the White House had been unavailing. The old gentleman, thoroughly aroused, mounted a strong counterattack, which left the President an avenue of retreat—that his assent to the order had been obtained without knowledge that the State Department was unaware of what was going on. If he had known that, said the President, he would never have signed the order. Weeks of meetings and drafting at the White House brought forth a mouse, called a "Clarification and Interpretation."^ A more inappropriate description can hardly be imagined. Both the title and the document must have greatly amused its author.
In the succeeding months the decline of the State Department was as liberally paved with the slippery phrases of this document as the descent to hell is with good intentions. The document, like Solomon, proposed to divide the baby of economic foreign policy; unlike Solomon, however, the document did divide it.
In the making of decisions, the board was admonished to recognize the primary responsibihty and position, under the President, of the Secretary of State "in the formulation and conduct of our foreign policy and our relations
with foreign nations." On the other hand, "in matters of business judgment concerned with . . . procurement of materials . . . the Department will recognize the primary responsibility and position of the Board." However, in many cases a decision might involve both matters of foreign policy and business judgment in varying degrees, in which case no clear-cut separation was possible. So the Secretary of State and the Chairman of the board should "reach a joint decision, in matters of sufficient importance obtaining direction from the President. . . . In short, for the effective exercise of the functions both of the Board and the Department, it [was] essential that from the inception of any project there be complete exchange of information, mutual consultation and mutual confidence," none of which existed or was likely to exist.
In the field all negotiations were to be authorized or conducted by State with the board participating in procurement discussions and being kept informed of lend-lease discussions. The chief of diplomatic mission in each country would be in charge and would coordinate everyone's activities. If, alas, he failed to do so, an appeal lay to the Secretary and the Chairman, two men who rarely met and thoroughly disliked each other. A committee in the Department would clear all proposals to send people abroad on official business—Welles, the Chairman, and Shaw for administrative matters, I for "the economic aspects."
With this spoonful of soothing syrup Mr. Hull and his cohorts had to be content. In the contest between Henry Wallace and Jesse Jones the round clearly went to Wallace.
THE PRESIDENT BROADENS THE BATTLE ROYAL
The successful allied landings in North Africa on November 8-10, 1942, ushered in a winter of discontent for the beleaguered State Department. With the end of the fighting, civilians from both the British and American governments converged on Algiers to represent their various ministries and agencies in the first exciting adventure of occupying conquered territory. There was, of course, some doubt whether the territory—that is, the French part of it—was conquered or liberated, and, if the latter, who should represent the "liberatee." The Washington battle over who should "coordinate" the civilians was quite as sharp.
The British hau no trouble. In their simple and direct way they sent out a Cabinet minister of commanding force and character, a former Guards officer, and everyone fell into disciplined order. But we had no one at home or abroad among the civilians who had, in a phrase that Harold Macmillan once used to me, "the stuff of command in him." Both within the Department and between agencies we fell into bickering. Into this explosive situation the President tossed a lighted firecracker. On November 21 the White House announced that Governor Herbert H. Lehman of New York would resign shortly to become associated with the Department of State as Director of Foreign Relief and Rehabilitation Operations."* He would organize American participation in assistance to "victims of war in areas reoccupied by the forces of the United Nations." This
was all that was needed to make the next round of the battle of Washington an enthralling spectacle. Governor Lehman might be slow but he looked like a heavyweight.
Even before the Governor's appointment the preliminary fights had begun in the Department. This time trouble came from the political sector. As civilians on government missions began entering their spheres of influence, the chiefs of geographic divisions became restless. They also had internal problems since, while Wallace Murray's barony covered the Near East and Africa, Ray Ather-ton was responsible for dealing with the two European nations that with us had become involved in North Africa. As the center of interest moved eastward, Murray's claims grew but, for the moment and in the common defense against economic upstarts, he accorded Atherton primacy. Ray went with his troubles to Breck Long, who diagnosed them as a struggle for power among "the radical boys." Wallace and Perkins, he thought, were backing Berle, "Frankfurter and his crew, acting through Acheson." Mr. Hull, he believed, wanted Atherton, who hesitated on the brink of involvement.^
In true conspiratorial style Long poured out his story to the President's secretary, Marvin Mclntyre, insisting that he (Long) should "not appear in it at all."'' The upshot of the whole sorry matter was another letter from the President to the Secretary putting him in charge of all nonmilitary matters affecting the interests of the United States as a result of the occupation of territories in Europe and North Africa. Mr. Hull on November 25 assigned this authority to the Division of European Affairs. The order created in the division an Office of Foreign Territories. Paul Appleby, the Under Secretary of Agriculture (upon whom Wallace, Perkins, and I had agreed as the man to handle this work before the row started), was put in charge of the office. All other divisions and officers were to continue their prior responsibilities except as the order "shall supersede the provisions of any existing Order"!^
The old geographic divisions and their officers had no experience or knowledge of conducting an operation where men, machines, and materials were used to an end. Their experience and training had been in discussion and reporting. The Office of Foreign Territories failed lamentably. Appleby, who could run the wheat-acreage-affocation plan, or the Bureau of Marketing, or supervise the Farm Credit Administration, could not understand the Division of European Affairs, and vice versa. In less than two months he resigned and returned to the more congenial environment of the Department of Agriculture.
Meanwhile, I had turned to a new set of problems presented by Governor Lehman and the relief and rehabilitation of occupied and liberated territory. The Governor gave me my first exposure to high state officials. FDR did not count since to him the Governorship had been a mere passing phase; Herbert Lehman had been Governor of our then most populous state for a decade (1933-42). I soon concluded that the training ground of future presidents would not be in the Governorship of the states. Later, Lehman was a useful member of the United States Senate, but the simplest executive task was beyond him. This he soon demonstrated.
We began with trouble in getting his role, the new Office of Foreign Ter-
ritories, and my work straightened out. Both Mr. Hull and Breck Long were persuaded that I would be a malign and dangerous influence. I was already rumored, as head of the Frankfurter contingent, to "have appropriated" the Governor, and Long urged the Secretary to get Lehman out of the State Department and "set him up as an independent agency under the President."^ Instead, he remained to confound confusion.
The original presidential announcement on November 21 appointing Lehman seemed to have been already limited by the order of November 25, and as the Governor probed deeper he found further reasons for unhappiness. Even the negotiation of a United Nations relief agency was to remain in the Secretary's province, with me as his deputy. In March of 1943 he was knocking at the White House door to find out what he was supposed to do. The answer granted broad authority with one generous hand while the other, more parsimonious one, took it away.^ He was to plan, coordinate, and arrange for our government's part in the "relief of victims of war in areas liberated from Axis control"—a pretty broad grant of authority—but he was expected to use the "facilities of the various government departments, agencies, and ofhcials which [were] equipped to assist in this field" and might issue to them such directives as he deemed necessary. Finally, his operations were to "be subject to the approval of the U.S. military commander in the area" (who was already doing what the Governor was now being told to do); in general foreign policy, to the directives of the Secretary of State; to agreements made in each area with our allies; and to a United Nations organization when created. In short, the Governor was to be a coordinator among coordinators, administrators, and warriors. With this hunting license he went off on a visit to London, announcing "that he did not intend to carry on negotiations for a joint United Nations approach to the relief and rehabilitation problem, since such negotiations will be conducted here [Washington] by the Secretary of State."^'^ To those negotiations we shall return after we have followed civil economic warfare to its denouement toward the end of the year.