ACROSS THE FRIGID NORTH ATLANTIC, ON THE NIGHT OF February 25, 1917, the Laconia steamed toward Liverpool. The Cunard liner carried some eighteen thousand tons of provisions and war matériel, 216 crew members, and seventy-three passengers, six of whom were Americans. All those on board understood that the voyage was potentially hazardous. Germany had recently resolved to launch unrestricted submarine attacks against American merchant vessels—the direst threat to the country’s shipping since the Barbary Wars. At 10:30, just off the Irish coast, two German torpedoes smashed through the Laconia’s hull, puncturing the stern and exploding in the engine room. “It was bedlam and nightmare,” recalled the Chicago Herald Tribune reporter Floyd Gibbons, who described the frantic rush for the lifeboats as the captain ordered the ship abandoned. Forty minutes later the Laconia was gone. “The ship sank rapidly at the stern until at last its nose stood straight in the air,” read Gibbons’s log. “Then it slid silently down and out of sight like a piece of disappearing scenery in a panorama spectacle.” Of the twenty-two people killed in the attack, two were Americans, a mother and her daughter.
Five weeks later, on April 2, President Wilson, who had recently been reelected on a platform of continued American neutrality, asked Congress for a declaration of war. Denouncing the “wanton and wholesale destruction of the lives of noncombatants, men, women, and children,” he accused Germany of conducting “warfare against mankind” and of committing “wrongs which…cut to the very roots of human life.” Wilson denied that the United States had any territorial or material ambitions in the war; it aspired only to uphold universal rights, preserve democracy, and assure the future peace through a concert of democratic nations. “America is privileged to spend her blood and her might for the principles that gave her birth and happiness and the peace which she has treasured,” Wilson ended.
According to international custom, and in keeping with the pattern of World War I, when one country declared war against another, it also went to war against its enemy’s allies. For America, this would have meant proclaiming a state of belligerency with all of the Central Powers, including Bulgaria, Austro-Hungary, and Turkey. But the president in his speech expressly denied harboring any animosity toward Germany’s allies and omitted all mention of Turkey. Rather, he decreed, “We enter this war only where we are clearly forced into it because there are no other means of defending our rights.” His meaning was precise: American troops had been forced to fight in the trenches of Europe, but not on the deserts and beaches of the Middle East.
Though couched in abstract principles, America’s decision not to go to war against Turkey was, in fact, the product of a painful weighing of realities. Wilson was unconvinced that the United States had grounds for declaring such a war. “They [the Turks] do not yet stand in the direct path of necessary action,” he said. On the other hand, the president and other members of his administration believed that Istanbul took its orders directly from Berlin and that any attempt to distinguish between the two was artificial. “The Central Empire runs from the Baltic to the Dardanelles,” Wilson’s chief foreign policy adviser, Colonel Edward Mandell House, averred. “Anything coming from a Turkish Cabinet official is under the suspicion of being dictated by Germany.” That assumption appeared to be verified when, in response to America’s declaration of war against Germany, Turkey severed relations with the United States.
Yet, even as they were evicting America’s ambassador from their capital, the Turks made conspicuous gestures to appease the United States. “What can we expect to gain if we take part in a war against the United States?” Djavid Pasha, the finance minister, asked. “Absolutely nothing.” He recalled that America, alone among the powers, had never coveted Turkish territory, and that it remained “Turkey’s only hope” for postwar reconstruction. Talaat Pasha insisted that the Turkish-American friendship would continue irrespective of American involvement in the war and ordered all anti-American sentiment excised from the state-controlled press. “Our relations with Turkey remain normal and perhaps more friendly than for some time past,” Ambassador Elkus concluded. “Turkey will not declare war against America.”1
Even if Turkey did display hostility toward the United States, and if its alliance with Germany could no longer be overlooked, it was still unclear how American troops would enter the Middle Eastern war. Elkus was confident that Turkey’s major cities could be easily bombarded from the sea and the empire swiftly invaded. “Turkey is the weakest link in the chain of the Central Powers, and…is on the verge of a breakdown,” he essayed. “The people of Turkey only want some such excuse…to compel [them to sign] a separate peace.” Some senior American generals agreed, stressing the many political and military advantages the country would achieve by contributing forces to the Middle Eastern theater.
From Wilson’s perspective, however, the task of intervening in the Middle East seemed far less facile. The army was utterly unprepared to fight on any front, much less one twice as far from home as Europe’s and in a less familiar environment. Supply and communications lines would be agonizingly long and exposed to submarine harassment. And even if the troops could be landed successfully in the Middle East, what guarantee was there that their intervention would lead to victory? Though the Allies had scored some crucial victories in 1917, including the capture of Baghdad, the Turkish army was far from defeated. Confronted with a new American threat, the Turks would likely seek a more active intervention by Germany and mount a joint and highly formidable resistance. If Wilson could see the potential for an eventual Anglo-American victory in the region, he could also envisage the possibility that hundreds of thousands of American soldiers would lie buried beside their British brethren beneath Middle Eastern sands.
In view of the technical complexities involved in attacking Turkey, and the lack of explicit Turkish aggression, the most compelling basis for American military intervention in the Middle East was humanitarian. The Turks had slaughtered as many as a million human beings in cold blood and seemed fixed on killing myriads more. The bloodshed would only stop, argued Cornelius Van H. Engert, a veteran American diplomat in the Middle East, when the United States intervened massively. “Nothing but a vigorous and sustained attack in Palestine and Mesopotamia will bring about this desired result.” Writing to Wilson from Adana, the Congregationalist missionary William Nesbitt Chambers wished that “such a power as the United States should become so strong on land and sea that…Turkey would never dare to commit such a horrible crime,” and that America with “a great gun…in one hand [and] the Gospel in the other” would come to the Armenians’ rescue. Most bellicose of all was the former New York City College president John H. Finley, head of the wartime Red Cross in Palestine. “America!” he urged. “You must send not only the Red Cross to this front. You must send that which Christ said he came to bring—a sword…[and] make common cause with the forces of justice against the demons of cruelty.”
The call to wage a war of conscience against Turkey was not, however, confined to Americans serving in the area. Members of both houses of Congress, Democrats and Republicans, were also calling on the president to act. “I should be sorry as an American…if when this war ends…we should appear at the great council of nations as still the friend of Turkey,” declared Henry Cabot Lodge, the chairman of the powerful Senate Foreign Relations Committee. House Speaker James Beauchamp Clark, a Republican, announced, “The present anomalous situation…is perfectly demoralizing. It is ridiculous to fight one half of the enemy and not the other half.” Minority Leader Frederick Gillette said, “Turkey’s course during the war has been so contemptible that I do not think we should hesitate…in declaring war against her.” The New York Times speculated that there was scarcely a single congressman or senator in favor of maintaining peace with the Turks.
Even more outspoken than the congressmen in his criticism of American neutrality was the contentious ex-president Theodore Roosevelt. “We ought to declare war on Turkey without an hour’s delay,” he bellowed. Asserting that the Turkish empire had “surpassed the iniquity of Germany herself by what she has done to her Christian subjects in Asia,” Roosevelt warned that the motto “making the world safe for democracy” would be reduced to empty rhetoric by American inaction in the Middle East. “We have the only chance that has ever been offered to us to interfere by force of arms in an entirely disinterested fashion for the oppressed nationalities that are ground under Turkish rule,” he reasoned. “It will be a lasting disgrace to our nation if we persist in this failure.”2
The recommendations of Lodge, Roosevelt, and others for war were rebuffed by an American who, before the war, had prayed for the Ottoman Empire’s demise. “I hesitate to butt in on matters of State,” began a letter to Wilson from his loyal friend, political patron, and Princeton classmate, Cleveland Dodge. After apologizing for his impertinence, Dodge urged against going to war with Turkey, warning of large-scale retribution against the Americans working there and the accelerated massacre of the peoples they were struggling to protect. “A declaration of war…would be fatal to our interests,” the philanthropist contended, adding, “From all accounts the Turks are treating our people with great & actually friendly consideration.” Dodge stressed that his opinions were formed without concern for the welfare of his daughter, who was teaching at Robert College, or his son, who was working in Beirut. His sole interest lay in preserving the “great educational, missionary and relief work in the Turkish Empire.”
Wilson replied with sympathy for “every word” of Dodge’s letter. “I have thought more than once of your dear ones in Turkey with a pang of apprehension that was very deep…and my heart is with you.” But other Americans dismissed the fears raised by Dodge and bitterly dissented from Wilson’s response. “We are guilty of a peculiarly odious form of hypocrisy when we profess friendship for Armenia and the downtrodden races of Turkey, but don’t go to war with Turkey,” countered Roosevelt, who went on to assert, “The Armenian massacre was the greatest crime of the war, and failure to act against Turkey is to condone it.” The ex–commander in chief who more than once sent American warships to the Middle East to safeguard missionaries and rescue hostages now accused church and relief workers of a “grave moral dereliction” for failing to leave the region while they could and frustrating American intervention. “The presence of our missionaries…did not prevent the Turks from massacring between half a million and a million Armenians, Syrians, Greeks and Jews,” he lectured Dodge. “Our declaration of war now will certainly not do one one-hundredth part of the damage already done by our failure to go to war in the past.”
Dodge and Roosevelt were quarreling over the best way to oppose despotism and preserve minority rights, over how best to uphold the tenets of American faith by preserving its primary agents, the missionaries. Traditional considerations of power such as oil, trade routes, and spheres of influence that impelled the European powers to wage war against Turkey and strive to conquer its territories scarcely entered the internal American debate. For Americans, the pivotal question was simple: how can the United States act most humanely?
In the end, Wilson sided with Dodge. The son of a Presbyterian minister, an intensely principled man whose global outlook was forged in the missionary milieu, the president could not bring himself to abandon those Americans who were risking their lives for the values he honored. Nor could he countenance the almost certain result of that abandonment—the deaths of the many thousands of people who were now dependent on American relief for food, shelter, and medical care. While the president did seek and obtain a war declaration against Austro-Hungary in December 1917, and seriously considered making war against Bulgaria, he never wavered from the status quo with Turkey.
The decision confounded the British and the French, who failed to understand how the United States had benefited from its neutrality, either militarily or politically, and why it would not assist them in defeating so despicable an enemy. The region needed American arms, they insisted, not American aid. Roosevelt could not have agreed more. “It is rather bitter to think that the cold selfishness and utter lack of all ethical qualities in Wilson made us onlookers at the…smashing of the Turkish Empire, instead of…valiant co-warriors,” he complained. Wilson, however, remained firm. To Cleveland, he pledged to do his utmost to restrain Congress from “following its inclination” to make war on Turkey. “I hope with all my heart that I can succeed.”3
Wilson did indeed succeed, overcoming robust opposition from the press, both houses of Congress, his own military commanders, and a popular former president. America never went to war against Turkey. Concern for the missionary institutions and the many populations they served had trumped all other strategic considerations in Wilson’s thinking. Yet, in deciding to forgo the use of force in the Middle East, the president would significantly diminish America’s status in the region and circumscribe his ability to influence its future.
AT PRECISELY the time that Wilson was deciding not to make war against Turkey, the Allied Powers were conspiring to divide Ottoman lands among them. In a series of secret agreements that began with the Sykes-Picot treaty of May 1916, Britain laid claim to immense territories between the Jordan River and the Persian Gulf. France arrogated control over Syria and Mosul, and Russia and Italy staked eastern and southwest Anatolia, respectively. Together, these agreements assured that at the war’s end not only the Ottoman Empire but Turkey itself would vanish.
As a nonbelligerent in the Middle Eastern war, the United States lacked the qualifications for participating in these talks. Moreover, deeply opposed to the allocation of Middle Eastern territories irrespective of their inhabitants’ wishes, the United States might well have boycotted the discussion anyway. But the absence of American input in planning for the postwar Middle East meant that Wilson could not effectively apply his principles of freedom and democracy to the region. He was undoubtedly earnest in pledging to protect “the rights and liberties of small nations” and “make the world itself free at last,” but without going to war against Turkey, he could scarcely defend the rights of those small Middle Eastern states that he ranked among the world’s least liberated.
A Chimerical Peace
The impact of America’s refusal to go to war in the Middle East was demonstrated by the futility of its one effort to attain peace. The initiative came in the late spring of 1917 in response to reports of growing resentment over German imperiousness in Istanbul and of Turkey’s desire to pursue an independent foreign policy. One source even intimated that Turkish officials might be induced to allow Allied submarines to pass through the Dardanelles and destroy German battleships anchored in the Bosphorus.
These communications were eagerly welcomed by Henry Morgenthau. Though Turkey, in his eyes, “was the cancer in the life of the world,” and one that must be “properly treated,” he always believed that the treatment would be diplomatic and not military. Now, convinced that the Turks were “heartily sick of their German masters,” Morgenthau proposed to undertake a secret mediation mission. In return for receiving guarantees for its continued sovereignty over Anatolia and the Straits, Turkey would withdraw its forces from the war. Lansing expressed doubt whether the plan would work, yet he told Wilson that if “there was one chance in fifty of success” he would “not leave any stone unturned which will lessen the power of Germany.” The president, too, was skeptical, but he saw no danger in offering America’s good offices. “If it succeeds it would be a decisive factor in the war,” he hypothesized. “If it failed, we would be no worse off than before.”
Morgenthau left the United States on June 21, 1917, in what was billed as an effort to investigate the plight of Palestinian Jews. To reinforce that alibi, Morgenthau was accompanied by the prominent Zionist Felix Frankfurter. A blunt and brilliant professor at Harvard Law, an adviser to Wilson’s War Department, Frankfurter had a low opinion of Morgenthau, finding him fulsome and inflated with “hot air impressions” of Turkey. The jurist’s main objective was to ensure that Morgenthau not succeed in allowing Turkey to exit from the war with its control over Palestine intact. The Holy Land, the Zionists hoped, would soon be conquered by the British, who would then work to transform it into a Jewish national home.
Frankfurter’s brief was closely coordinated with the most preeminent Zionist leader of the day, the Russian-born but naturalized British chemist Chaim Weizmann. Bald-headed and hooked-nose, endowed with an immense moral stature and charm, Weizmann had forged a close alliance with the British foreign secretary, Arthur Balfour. Like many British restorationists, Balfour combined zealous religious beliefs with a firm sense of realpolitik; Palestine, if given to the Jews, would not only summon Christ but also serve British imperial interests. Balfour consequently shared the Zionists’ concern that Turkey would abandon the war before British troops could reach Jerusalem, and appointed Weizmann Britain’s emissary to Morgenthau. “Talk to Morgenthau,” the secretary told the scientist, “and keep on talking until you’ve talked him out of his mission.”
Weizmann rendezvoused with Morgenthau and Frankfurter on the Rock of Gibraltar. Also present was Arshag K. Schmavonian, an Armenian who had served as an adviser to the U.S. embassy in Turkey. Weizmann bluffly informed Morgenthau that his effort was premature, that the Central Powers would merely interpret it as a sign of Allied weakness and redouble their commitment to fight. He also pressed Morgenthau for assurances that “on no account would the Zionist organization be in any way identified or mixed up with even the faintest attempts to secure a separate peace.” Peace would come, Weizmann, conveying the British line, ventured, but only after Turkey’s defeat and its concession of Armenia, Syria, and Palestine.
Weizmann’s remarks mortified Morgenthau, though not so keenly as the message borne by Schmavonian. The Turks, he said, were furious over an interview in which Morgenthau alleged that the Porte was willing to sell Palestine to the Jews. They also accused him of bragging about his supposedly secret mission and of provoking harsh reactions in the Western press. “Is then the Young Turk clique to be trusted again with the matters of the Armenians, Arabs, and Zionist Jews?” a spokesman for the Armenians had protested. As a result, Morgenthau was now considered unwelcomed in Istanbul, which, in any case, had no intention of severing its alliance with Germany.
In light of these devastating discussions, Morgenthau saw little sense in continuing his mission. “Time is not ripe to enter into negotiations,” he cabled Washington. “It is useless therefore to proceed to Turkey.” The State Department agreed and ordered him to leave Gibraltar at once. For Frankfurter, the entire experience had been “a wild goose chase,” and Wilson also regretted the effort, dismissing it as “chimerical and of questionable advantage, even if it could be accomplished.” In its major debut at Middle East peacemaking, the United States had shown itself to be naïve and clumsy. Morgenthau, the frustrated savior of the Armenian people, had proved to be a disappointment as a negotiator as well, a gullible, tragic figure. A humbled Colonel House told his diary, “Morgenthau’s trip has turned out to be a fiasco.”
The failure of the Morgenthau mission sealed U.S. policy toward Turkey for the remainder of World War I and solidified America’s neutral status in the Middle East. The Turks remained appreciative of that impartiality, as their troops retreated before the Allied onslaught. The British, too, were pleased not to have to share the glory with America when their forces entered Jerusalem in December 1917. Most delighted of all, perhaps, were the American missionaries and relief workers who, thanks in part to American neutrality, survived the war and were now thriving under a sympathetic occupation. In their view, the collapse of Ottoman rule throughout the Middle East, and in particular in the Holy Land, appeared to augur redemption. “We have been in the seventh heaven these past days over the news from…Palestine,” Cleveland Dodge giddily informed Wilson. “I am…grateful to you for your wise and patient course of action—or nonaction.”4
American missionaries and their backers were not alone in hailing the outcome of the war. Zionists, too, were ecstatic. But if, in the past, missionaries and Zionists would have rejoiced for the same reasons—the opportunity to restore Palestine to the Jews—they now celebrated on different and ultimately irreconcilable grounds. Having abandoned their original restorationist goal in favor of Arab nationalism, the missionaries saw the war’s end as the advent of liberation for all Arab lands, including Palestine. The Zionists, by contrast, viewed Turkey’s defeat as the first step toward the fulfillment of Jewish claims to Eretz Yisrael, the Land of Israel. The Zionists were far from alone in cherishing that vision, however. With them stood millions of American Christians and, for the first time, small but swelling numbers of American Jews.