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Bijdragen en Mededelingen van het Historisch Genootschap. Deel 81 (1967)

Bijdragen en Mededelingen van het Historisch Genootschap. Deel 81

(1967)– [tijdschrift] Bijdragen en Mededeelingen van het Historisch Genootschap–rechtenstatus Auteursrechtelijk beschermd

Vorige Volgende

The Academy and American foreign policy1

During the last two years, many American academicians have been involved in the complex dispute concerning Vietnam. In the face of a generally apathetic public, we observe the strange phenomenon of intellectuals assuming vigorous, outspoken roles on American foreign policy. Noted scholars, respected teachers, and popular writers have been as active as the most radical groups on college campuses. They have resorted to petitions to the President in the form of newspaper advertisements, all night teach-ins, community walks for peace, and ‘marches’ on Washington and the United Nations.

Is this involvement new? If not new, has it been effective? Looking to the future, should it be encouraged? And finally, is there anything unique about the Academy that should impel presidents to elicit their wisdom and seek their guidance?

The learned Pieter Geyl gave some insight into this complex and delicate controversy when he remarked that, ‘We historians cannot give to anyone the knowledge required in capsules nicely dosed, effect guaranteed... I may seem dangerously near the conclusion that only trained historians are fit to rule the world. In all sincerity that is not what I mean, although I can't deny that I have sometimes wished for that ...’ And again, perhaps he somewhat overstated the possible role of the historian when he suggested that... ‘human beings being what they are, history can benefit by a close contact of the historian's imagination, or awareness, with contempory life’2.

The academician in America has generally held himself aloof from intimate involvement in governmental decision making. The grim, unpalatable world of ‘dirty politics’, of compromises in the struggle for power, was not one to attract scholars. And yet, if the public ever really knew of the university battles for status, promotion and influence, we academicians might stand exposed as a fairly rough breed of politicians.

The rejection of public politics by the Academy, and an anti-

intellectual climate in which it operated, produced an aura of ‘alienation’ for the scholar. This has not been all to the bad - many times it has been a blessing. But there are negative consequences of this alienation concerning foreign affairs today which require our attention. It is the belief of some scholars that members of the Academy should accept, as a public responsibility, involvement in foreign affairs. Involvement, however, may have many facets: preparation of research materials for governmental agencies; a call to a government post; and still another, the role of an interest group which develops, educates and influences public opinion and policy makers. My paper focuses on the Academy as an interest group in foreign affairs.

Let me make clear from the start that when I refer to the Academy in this paper I am not restricting myself to the faculties of colleges and universities. I also include the intelligentsia - those intellectuals who make significant contributions to shaping the American purpose. Furthermore, I will not be concerned with the Academy in its accepted role - as a place for study, research and for the training of youth. I intend to comment upon the role of this enlarged Academy in influencing the formulation of American foreign policy. For this purpose, three specific crises, or major turning points, will be discussed: the Spanish American War and the annexation of the Philippine Islands, the First World War, and the Spanish Civil War of 1936. The selections are a matter of taste - for each crisis has always held a special fascination for me. In 1898, the United States suddenly became a leading member of the world community; in 1917, we note a serious conflict between Wilsonian idealism and political realism; and from 1936 to 1939, the events in Spain foreshadow the Nazi attack upon democracy.

It must be admitted that from the earliest days of colonial settlement, not all, but a good many academicians have accepted the notion that criticism was the prime responsibility of independent scholars. Through fearless analysis, intellectuals have helped shape the values and objectives of American society. They voiced the hopes and aspirations of the courageous and the frightened who journeyed from many nations, including the Netherlands, to a strange, new world. They gave meaning to the revolt against the British Empire and made the American experiment a shining symbol for the entire world. The academically-trained Founding Fathers gave the nation a living Constitu-

tion, an extraordinary instrument for constructing a new country. Succeeding generations moved steadily westwards, closing the continental frontier centuries before Thomas Jefferson's prediction. Then, looking out upon vast continents and a heterogeneous population, intellectuals became involved in great controversies over the role and responsibilities of the nation as a new world power - disputes which rage today in the nuclear era.

Since the last decade of the nineteenth century, academicians have varied in their interest, their viewpoints, and in their contributions to American foreign policy. From the beginning, some sided with a militant imperialism, police action in Latin America, and involvement in Europe from World War I on. Others, however, warned against the dangers of military conflict, and in creating a colonial empire. Still others remained as apathetic as the general public. It was during the 1890's, however, that important changes in outlook and thinking within the nation enabled a few academicians to alter American foreign policy.

 

The Reverend Josiah Strong, a Congregationalist minister, published a memorable work in 1885, Our Country. Within a decade, it significantly influenced hundreds of thousands of readers. He reaffirmed the writings of Social Darwinists like William Graham Sumner, who believed in the innate superiority of the Anglo-Saxon race, and endorsed a laissez-faire governmental policy while opposing trade unions and social legislation. Strong went further to project that the inferior races were destined to give way before their superiors, the American anglo-saxons. Appealing to the moral sentiments of his fellow country men, Strong heralded: ‘This race of unequalled energy, with all the majesty of numbers and wealth behind it - the representative, let us hope, of the largest liberty, the purest Christianity, the highest civilization - having developed peculiarly aggressive traits calculated to impress its institutions upon mankind, will spread itself over the earth’3.

 

Accepting Strong's concept of the superior race, along with its moral mission, was Captain Alfred Thayer Mahan, naval officer, lecturer on naval history, and War College president

for twenty-five years. In 1890 he wrote a monumental work, The Influence of Sea Power upon History, followed by popular articles and books on the same subject. At a time when American seapower was notoriously weak, he urged and secured increasing public support for an expansionist philosophy of manifest destiny: a big navy, a strong merchant marine, naval bases and colonial possessions throughout the world. Sea power, he insisted, was the key factor in insuring the inevitable destiny and prosperity of the American nation. It was during the 1890's that the arguments of Strong, but particularly those of Mahan, had enormous impact upon the public as well as upon influential spokesmen in Congress, the press, and among academicians4.

As Richard Hofstadter explained in one of his pioneering contributions, the public temper had been radically altered by a number of unsettling developments during this decade which evoked widespread anxieties, discontent and frustration. A severe economic depression, beginning in 1893, enabled the Populists to capture a major party within three years, and convince the economic and social establishments that they were being challenged. The fulfillment of the American industrial revolution, and the expansion of trusts, threatened the traditional small entrepreneur and the competitive style of economic pursuits. Furthermore, the forebodings of the Turner thesis - that the American frontier was forever closed - excited apprehension, dismay and abject fear. Labor strikes, civic corruption, and the seemingly endless stream of strange newcomers from abroad, disclosed a nation uncertain, restless and apprehensive.

The unsettling events evoked two sharply contrasting movements: one, humanitarian, which produced populism, the social gospel, socialism, and the settlement house; the other, self-assertive and egoistic, led to an aggressiveness and a burst of jingoism. The decade of the nineties, then, was one of change and turmoil, and unlike the traditional, introverted spirit of the past, the 1890's found Americans increasingly involved in ex-

pansionist ventures in the Pacific and quarrels over boundaries in Latin America5.

Strong and Mahan could not have produced their works at a more opportune moment. Most important, however, their ideas appealed to Theodore Roosevelt. Young, personable and effective with pen and politics, Roosevelt popularized Mahan's ideas, softening traditional American hostility to war and imperialism. Receptive audiences heard his repeated pleas that ‘the nation that regards war as the worse of all evils and the avoidance of war as the highest good is a wretched and contemptible nation, and it is well that it should vanish from the face of the earth.’ War and military preparedness, he insisted, kept modern industrialized and urbanized nations from growing soft and purposeless6.

The humanitarian movement in America, which ran side by side with expansionism and navalism, had stimulated keen interest in the Cuban nationalist movement. Since the 1870's, many Americans, including academicians, had supported the Cuban drive for independence from a repressive Spanish colonial policy. As the Cuban situation deteriorated in the 1890's, a restless American public responded to the jingoism and distortions of the yellow press. By this time, also, the construction of an adequate navy made it possible to contemplate war with an enfeebled Spain.

By the time William McKinley entered the White House in 1897, nationalist enthusiasm for the liberation of Cuba had progressed to the stage where conflict seemed inevitable. Some even feared that Congress would initiate a declaration of war. Easily influenced by public opinion, President McKinley found it difficult to contain this humanitarian crusade to liberate Cuba. Within the movement were elements representing urban and rural America, progressive Democrats, Populists, as well as Socialists. Only a segment of big business, Marxian socialists led by Daniel de Leon, and the Unitarian and Quaker churches opposed American intervention. Opponents generally feared that manifest destiny and war would turn mens' minds from a

humanitarian purpose to a glorification of the nation's might, and of martial conflict. As ardent a critic of the raging war fever as famed philosopher William James, conceded that its basis was ‘honest humanitarianism, and an absolutely disinterested desire on the part of our people to set the Cubans free ...’ While insisting that Americans did not want an Empire, he nevertheless predicted the possibility that by going to war, the nation might acquire Puerto Rico and the Philippines7.

To set Cubans free from concentration camps, and from an oppressive condition, was a humanitarian goal which appealed to virtually all academicians. After the Cubans were finally liberated from Spain by ‘that splendid little war’, McKinley was confronted with an aroused public, delighted with easy military successes and susceptible to the imperialist appeals of Strong, Mahan and Roosevelt. At this juncture in history, the President solved the problem of the Philippines by deciding to annex them, and immediately alienated many academicians. These intellectuals, appalled by what they deemed a perversion of a just crusade launched to free the oppressed, rejected the new direction as selfish and anti-democratic.

Senate ratification of the President's decision was not easily secured, in part due to the Academy's opposition. Additionally, this venture with expansionism was essentially contrary to the traditional American purpose and the nation's preoccupation with internal affairs. Diplomatic historian Samuel Bemis perceived the situation, in later years, when he remarked that:

‘Before the war there had not been the slightest demand for the acquisition of the Philippine Islands. The average American citizen could not have told you whether the Filipinos were Far Eastern aborigines or a species of tropical nuts... President McKinley himself had to look them up on the globe; he could not have told their locality, within 2,000 miles’8.

 

A small segment of the Academy, inspired by the imperialist

theories of Mahan, assumed a forceful and effective role in support of McKinley's Empire. They included Roosevelt; John Hay, diplomat, Secretary of State and biographer of Lincoln; Senator Albert Beveridge, biographer of Supreme Court Justice John Marshall; Albert Shaw, editor of the American Review of Reviews; Walter H. Page, editor of the Atlantic Monthly; and Henry and Brooks Adams, descendants of two presidents. These historians and intellectuals sought to create another British Empire, not the business community. They emphasized the responsibility of the United States to carry out the white man's burden and to fulfill its ‘racial’ destiny.

The dangers of war, they felt, might well result from a scramble among other powers for control of the Philippines, if Washington did not annex them. These academicians were instrumental in stimulating public support and in barely securing the constitutional majority necessary for ratification of the peace treaty by February 1899. For the rest of that year, and on through the next, they battled the opposition elements in the academic world who sought to convert the 1900 presidential campaign into a referendum on the Philippines.

The opposition to the imperialist venture included the greater number of eminent academicians, who based their position on an appeal to principle - the violation of the natural rights of people to self-determination. They feared that this exercise in expansion contradicted the American purpose and would result in disillusionment, militarism, and war. They indicted the cruelty and inhumanity displayed by American soldiers after capturing followers of Aguinaldo, the Filipino leader of the nationalist revolt who now fought new conquistadores.

The academicians funnelled their opposition through two political facets - the Democratic candidate for President, William Jennings Bryan, an avowed opponent of annexation and the Anti-Imperialist League. This hastily formed pressure group was handicapped by lateness in getting underway, and by an aged and heterogeneous leadership. Its activists included Edward Atkinson, a Boston economist; William Sumner, first occupant of the chair of political and social science at Yale University; William James, professor of philosophy at Harvard and advocate of pragmatism; David Starr Jordan, president of Stanford University; and Jane Addams, humanitarian, social worker and founder of Chicago's Hull House. While the Anti-Imperialist League fought the predominantly imperialist press

with vigour, Sumner charged betrayal of the American purpose, insisting that:

‘We have beaten Spain in a military conflict, but we are submitting to be conquered by her on the field of ideas and policies.... We are told by all the imperialists that these people are not fit for liberty and self-government; that it is rebellion for them to resist our beneficence; that we must send fleets and armies to kill them if they do it; that we must devise a government for them and administer it ourselves; that we may buy them or sell them as we please, and dispose of their “trade” for our own advantage. What is that but the policy of Spain to her dependencies? What can we expect as a consequence of it? Nothing but that it will bring us where Spain is now’9.

When Edward Atkinson persisted in sending anti-imperialist propaganda to American soldiers in the Philippines, the sensitivities of Washington were aroused and attempts made to deny him use of the mails. Normally indifferent to criticism during peacetime, the McKinley administration was on the verge of demonstrating that freedom of opinion in a war crisis could not be tolerated. However, the move to silence the critics was halted by vigorous public protest. One editorial writer emotionally charged that this was an attempt at ‘rule by blood and iron’10. A different outcome resulted under Wilson's leadership in World War I.

The eminent academicians who opposed McKinley's empire were unsuccessful in countering the appeal of expansionism. Senator Albert Beveridge's colorful prose appealed to a majority of the committed citizenry when he said:

‘We will not renounce our part in the mission of our race, trustees under God, of the civilization of the world. God has not been preparing the English-speaking and Teutonic peoples for a thousand years for nothing but vain and idle self-contemplation and self-admiration. No! He has made us the master organizers of the world to establish system where chaos reigns... among savages and senile peoples’11.

With the return of prosperity and the speedy, spectacular victories in war, those opposed to annexation could not halt the new imperialism. In addition, the crusade attracted new supporters. Big business, originally disinterested, suddenly shifted position and joined the public clamour for enlarging America's holdings. Although the 1900 elections involved other important issues, the re-election of McKinley, and his new running mate Theodore Roosevelt, seemed to endorse the boldness and new designs of the nation's decision makers. Within a few years, however, this uneasy and embarrassing venture with expansionist politics came to an end as the government, with Roosevelt's support, sought to divest itself of its Far Eastern Empire. Thus ended the brief experiment with imperialism.

World War I

Between 1900 and involvement in the First World War, the country pursued a crusading commitment in Central America to protect United States political, military, and economic interests. But annexation of new territories no longer motivated foreign policy. Initiated by Roosevelt and carried forth by Woodrow Wilson, the nation assumed the responsibility of policing disorderly areas and taking a lead in world diplomacy. Journalists, publicists, navalists, and most political leaders supported Roosevelt's ‘Big Stick’ ventures. As early as 1902, political science professor Woodrow Wilson commented that ‘the day of our isolation is past’, and ‘America must lead the world’12.

For most Americans, the war that began in Europe in 1914 seemed too distant and insignificant to warrant concern. Proud and content that European entanglements had been avoided for over a century, little did Americans realize that this had been made possible by the powerful British navy, and the struggle for power which occupied Europe. Only a handful of the intelligentsia, or ‘realists’ as they were called, insisted from the beginning of World War I that a British victory was essential to American self-preservation.

David Lewis Einstein, historian, lecturer, diplomat and devotee of Mahan's ideas, wrote extensively on the need for developing American markets, for building a navy to protect

them, and an efficient diplomatic corps. Einstein insisted that the United States had to alter its policy of isolation and actively protect its vital interests. In his book, American Foreign Policy, published in 1909, he lamented the fact that America achieved world position much too easily and that more initiative and activity was essential for maintaining leadership. He warned that if a lengthy war developed between Germany and Britain, it would test American neutrality. And should a German victory appear imminent, the United States would have to intervene on the side of the British. But the public disregarded his warnings that the country was intimately affected by important changes in Europe.

Shortly after the outbreak of war, Einstein acquired a small following which included Robert Lansing - the man who eventually became Wilson's Secretary of State. At this time, Einstein recommended watchful neutrality, an increase in naval armaments, and pursuit of an active role for Washington in peace negotiations. Fearing possible German victory, he urged extension of the Monroe Doctrine to encompass England on grounds of self-preservation13.

Historian George Louis Beer proposed, in May 1915, an alliance with England and eventual political union with the Commonwealth. Following Einstein's lead, he insisted that American security depended upon British sea power, and that German victory would serously threaten the Monroe Doctrine. Albert Bushnell Hart, famous historian at Harvard, reaffirmed our dependence on the British navy and the balance of power in Europe, and contended that the invasion of Belgium had opened Latin America and the Eastern Coast of the United States to German incursion. By early 1917, Hart was appealing to the nation to support Wilson's proposals for military preparedness.

Beer and Hart constituted the vanguard of academicians associated with ‘militant idealism’ - those who maintained ‘it was cowardly to postpone America's entrance into the war until Germany actually threatened American security.’ Attracted to this position were such noted intellectuals as Ralph Barton Perry, Josiah Royce, Lyman Abbot, Booth Tarkington, George Harvey and William Roscoe Thayer. It was Thayer, well known biographer of Cavour and Roosevelt who, in his Germany

Versus Civilization, underscored the danger of German glorification of brute force and of such German national traits as mendacity, cunning and cruelty. The book had a large circulation and wide influence among academicians. Charles W. Eliot, 80 year old former president of Harvard, had urged involvement as early as 1914, but quickly withdrew his suggestion. Nevertheless, he warned against the dangers of German victory for Europe and predicted an overwhelming burden of armaments for America. After the sinking of the Lusitania, he knew it was only a matter of time before the US would be fully involved in the conflict, and cautiously stimulated support in that direction.

The more outspoken extremists in the academic world, such as university president John G. Hibben of Princeton, and professors Franklin H. Giddings of Columbia and Albion W. Small of Chicago, found their views eloquently expressed by a renowned novelist. As early as May 1915, William Dean Howells lauded England in such idealistic terms as: ‘... it is the cause of liberty, of humanity, of Christianity;... it is something like a last hope of mankind;... if it fails civilization will no longer be free in Europe or America...’14.

The passionate belligerency of these prominent academicians was not shared by the American populace. Like most intellectuals in the country who were pro-British, there was general acceptance of the inevitability of allied success, without the need for involving the United States. Most decision makers in Washington did not realize the serious state of allied military affairs until after April 1917. Throughout this period of neutrality, farmers and workers generally exhibited disinterest in events in Europe, or open hostility to proposals for preparedness. Senators Robert LaFollette of Wisconsin and George Norris of Nebraska led that segment of public opinion which was antiwar, and believed in neutrality as the only viable policy in face of the ‘madness’ engulfing Europe. Even after America entered the conflict, this group's opposition was widely supported.

Within the Academy, the schism over the war widened. An outstanding scholar has suggested that ‘articulate Americans were profoundly divided up to the very end of American

neutrality, and that organized peace activity and visible signs of peace sentiment were nearly as strong, if not fully as strong, as organized war activity and signs of war sentiment.’ Voicing the viewpoint of followers of LaFollette and Norris, of militant pacifists like Jane Addams, and of former populists in the south and west, one Socialist intellectual characterized the war as a ‘ghastly carnage,’ having ‘no redeeming features.’ Morris Hillquit, a founder of the Socialist Party at the turn of the century, insisted that ‘It is not a war for democracy, culture, or progress. It is not a fight for sentiment or ideals. It is a cold-blooded butchery for advantages and power, and let us not forget it - advantages and power for the ruling classes of the warring nations’15.

Frederic Howe, longtime progressive who had written extensively on city reforms in the United States and Britain, deplored the trend toward involvement. He insisted that ‘war preparations and emphasis upon militarism is national suicide to all the things I am interested in. I could stand the financial cost if it were equitably distributed but I can't stand the social cost. It is taking poison into the system’16.

Though the articulate elite remained hopelessly divided by March 1917, demands for American involvement were finally sweeping across the nation. William English Walling, Charles Edward Russel, Upton Sinclar, and virtually all the intellectuals in the Socialist Party were found side by side with Republicans Roosevelt, Elihu Root, and Charles Evans Hughes in demanding a declaration of war against Germany. At Princeton, president Hibben refused to permit the pacifist and former president of Stanford, David Starr Jordan, to speak on the campus. And in the same hall in New York's Cooper Union, where Abraham Lincoln had warned against a ‘house divided’, Socialist leader Eugene Debs stated that he would rather be shot as a traitor than ‘go to war for Wall Street.’

President Wilson concluded, by March 1917, that the European battle had become a struggle between barbarism and civilization, insisting that the United States enter the war to ‘cleanse...

power politics in Europe.’ In reaching this final decision, Wilson was undoubtedly influenced, perhaps unconsciously, by one of his closest advisers, the Secretary of State. Robert Lansing was the only member of the cabinet who, from the start, had shared Lewis Einstein's view of the war. By April, the President endorsed virtually all of Lansing's objectives in calling for a declaration of war17.

If, as some historians maintain, that the key to American intervention was the ‘thoughts and actions of the Chief Executive’, then it appears that those academicians who sought alliance with England had little, if any, direct influence upon Wilson prior to 1917. Throughout the period of neutrality, those who had access to the President constantly lamented their ‘inability to impress upon him the the gravity of the German threat.’ Arthur Link, definitive biographer of Wilson, has affirmed this fact, - impressed by the large number of pro-Allied academicians during the years of neutrality who failed ‘to exert any direct influence upon official American policies toward the belligerents’. Additionally, few academicians sought war ‘until it had become obvious that American participation could not be avoided anyway’18.

 

During the war years many academicians repudiated the finest traditions of their profession - the search for objective scholarship and understanding, the right to dissent and nonconformity. In Washington and elsewhere, they emulated their crusading president in his bitter, intolerant behavior toward literary critics and political opponents of the war. They fostered the decline of academic freedom on university campuses across the country. Characteristically, when the Associated Press misquoted a statement by Robert LaFollette, academicians at the University of Wisconsin did not bother to investigate the error but, instead, immediately signed a petition denouncing him as a traitor, while students hung him in effigy. Ironically, LaFollette as Governor had been the first major political leader of the 20th century to create a brains trust of advisers from among professors. And they were from the University of Wisconsin.

Five duly elected assemblymen were denied their seats in the New York State legislature, and Victor Berger was refused his in Congress, solely because they were Socialists. A more militant segment of organized labor was crushed because of its opposition to the war. German language departments were abolished in secondary schools, and German-born orchestra conductors and musicians banned from the concert hall. Even sauerkraut had to be renamed ‘liberty cabbage’.

Civil war in Spain

In the years following the war, American foreign policy was shaped by a spirit of withdrawal and non-involvement with the European continent. This isolationism evolved from disillusionment with Wilsonian idealism, with the League of Nations, and with the continuation of turmoil in Europe and Asia. Many intellectuals concluded that ‘not by backing one side against another, but by preserving the moral ascendancy of an honest neutral arbiter, could the United States be useful’. When the League sought to apply partial sanctions against Italy in 1935, the United States repeatedly rejected efforts to be drawn into any sort of consultation or cooperation. ‘A rumor that the word “assurances” had passed between British and American diplomats was enough to cause a near panic in the State Department’19.

This rejection of involvement was reflected also, in part, by the revisionist school of historians which emerged after the First World War. As a result of the publication of diplomatic materials by the new governments in Germany, Austria and Russia, and the memoirs of prominent wartime figures, the earlier, simplistic accounts of the war and war guilt were gradually supplanted. Though there was disagreement as to the causes of the war, they united around the idea that martial conflict was ‘the worst social evil of the race’20.

 

On the political scene between 1934 and 1936, Republican Senator Gerald Nye directed a well publicized investigation into

the manufacture, sale and distribution of armaments. The published findings of his committee - that arms races, international tension, and wars were encouraged by munitions manufacturers and financiers -, strengthened isolationist sentiment and public support for neutrality legislation. Although President Franklin Roosevelt favored a flexible policy for arms embargo legislation and sought authority to impose restrictions on aggressors, Congress refused his requests. Responding to Italy's invasion of Ethiopia in May 1935, Congress authorized the Chief Executive to prohibit all arms shipments to belligerents for six months and to forbid travel on belligerent vessels except at personal risk, after he proclaimed the existence of a state of war. Roosevelt signed the measure but characterized it as calculated to ‘drag us into war instead of keeping us out’. This law was later extended to prohibit loans or credits to belligerents.

Within weeks after the start of the Spanish Civil War in July 1936, the intensity of feeling engendered in the United States threatened to split the liberal-progressive consensus behind Roosevelt. After some 15 years of isolationist, pacifist rhetoric, academicians found themselves in the awkward position of taking sides in a military conflict. While the general populace remained indifferent to these developments, the overwhelming membership of the intellegentsia viewed the struggle in Spain as the ‘crucial event of the decade,’ the most significant battle between fascism and democracy. Their cohesion, however, proved ineffective in altering Roosevelt's original decision21.

Government policy in response to the Civil War was quickly formulated by the President, and remained constant throughout. Controversy, however, never abated over the government's position of ‘neutrality’. As one young historian put it, recently,

‘Excepting only the Great Depression and the hostilities that began in September 1939, no public event of the 1930s mattered so much to so many Americans as did the Spanish Civil War’22.

Within a week of the outbreak of the revolt, Roosevelt demonstrated that he was more isolationist than some advocates of neutralism when he and Secretary of State Cordell Hull

endorsed the positions taken by England and France. These two democracies were anxious to limit the holocaust to Spain, and Roosevelt conceded to them the initiative in concluding a non-intervention agreement. The United States, however, had nothing official to do with the agreement subsequently approved by the major European powers, including Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy.

Within a month, Roosevelt directed a ‘moral embargo’ against both sides in the Spanish conflict which meant, in essence, an embargo against the Popular Front government in Madrid. Despite the fact that existing neutrality legislation, providing for an arms embargo on all belligerents, had no legal application in the Spanish situation - a civil war - Roosevelt concluded that the mood of the country favored non-involvement. As one of Hull's subordinates put it, in a factually incorrect communication to Consulates in Spain: ‘in conformity with its wellestablished policy of non-interference with the internal affairs in other countries, either in time of peace or in the event of civil strife, this Goverment will... scrupulously refrain from any interference whatsoever in the unfortunate Spanish situation’23.

Roosevelt's ‘moral embargo’ collapsed in December when an American citizen insisted on his legal right to export arms to loyalist Spain. At a press conference late that month, the President saw fit to denounce the individual's actions as unpatriotic, though legal. At the same time, he pushed through passage of a joint Congressional resolution which forbade the export of munitions to either of the opposing forces in Spain. Only one Congressman, a Farmer-Laborite from Minnesota, stood up to vote against the resolution. By this action, Roosevelt made a sham of neutrality and contributed to the end of the parliamentary system in Spain. Immediately, thereafter, academicians challenged the government's position. Twenty college presidents and deans, who urged repeal of the embargo, on primarily legal grounds, were joined by isolationists and internationalists, by Democrats and Republicans, as well as by Socialists and Communists.

Henry L. Stimson, former Republican cabinet member, who

would join FDR's cabinet during World II, reminded the Chief Executive that the Spanish Republican government had been recognized by the United States, that the basis of recognition was not the ideology of the country but the fact that it had control of the machinery of state with the approval of the people. Spain was, therefore, ‘admitted to the family of nations with all conventional rights and privileges’, and one of these was self defense against rebellion. Philip Jessup of Columbia University underscored the contradictions in Roosevelt's reasoning when he pointed to the historic role of American foreign policy, as it related to civil wars: ‘... when the civil war was in Europe, to do nothing to restrict arms commerce; when the war was in Latin America, to prevent arms from reaching the rebels and to help the recognized government to obtain them’. Stimson and Jessup cited the American Civil War when the north succeeded in convincing Britain not to ship arms to the Southern Confederacy. The intensity of the dispute was registered by Charles Beard who denounced the embargo as ‘... a slap straight in the face of the Madrid government.... Under American theory and practise... the Madrid regime was entitled to buy munitions and supplies in the United States’24.

Allen Dulles and Hamilton Fish Armstrong, students of foreign affairs, condemned the embargo as ‘an abrupt departure from our traditional practise’ and as ‘an instrument in the hands of the German and Italian totalitarian governments’. They underscored the bias of the Neutrality legislation, insisting that international law required Washington to ‘treat the elected and recognized government of Spain as the lawful governments’. A noted university professor pointed out that the repeal of the arms embargo would be in accord with the statute itself. The purpose of the non-intervention committee, he maintained, had already been defeated by Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain's appeasement of Hitler and Mussolini, who were sending unlimited amounts of munitions, tanks, planes, and tens of thousands of soldiers, technicians and pilots to fascist Franco. Repeal would also mark a return to a ‘hands-off’ position instead of ‘taking an affirmative action which inevitably affects the out-

come of a struggle in which we profess not to be concerned’25.

While sixty Congressmen sent greetings to the Spanish Cortes in January 1938, fifteen prominent scientists, including Arthur Compton and Harold Urey, pleaded with the President to lift the embargo to ‘save the world from a Fascist gulf’. Nevertheless, Roosevelt's Spanish policy, following the Neutrality Act of 1937, proved to be inconsistent with the liberal interpretation he gave the legislation in the Far East. Despite fighting between Japan and China after July 1937, Roosevelt permitted the continued sale of arms to China. Academicians could lament to little avail, that ‘Spain is resisting invasion just as China is, yet Spain is the only country in the world which cannot purchase munitions in the United States’26.

It would have been timely, though unavailing, to have brought to the attention of Roosevelt, remarks by John Stuart Mill on the subject of non-intervention. Mill had held that:

‘The doctrine of nonintervention to be a legitimate principle of morality, must be accepted by all governments. The despots must consent to be bound by it as well as the free states. Unless they do, the profession of it by free countries comes but to this miserable issue, that the wrong side may help the wrong, but the right must not help the right’27.

From the moment of his election to the governorship of New York in 1928, Roosevelt had involved academicians in the formulation of practically every major governmental policy, including reforms in agriculture, penal codes and social welfare legislation. In view of his general receptiveness, and closeness to members of the Academy, how explain Roosevelt's complete disregard of their counsel during the Spanish Civil War? Students of this period agree that Roosevelt's response was shaped by the pressures of British policy, the isolationist drive at home, and the vigorous role of the American Roman Catholic hierarchy in opposing the Loyalist government in Madrid. In addition, initial negative response to the President's address in

October, 1937, urging ‘peace loving nations to quarantine the aggressor’, dissuaded Roosevelt from further education of the public along these lines - at least until the outbreak of World War II.

With rare exception, newspapers across the nation endorsed the policy of neutrality, while public opinion polls indicated that only 24 per cent of the population were committed to changes in neutrality legislation. Fearing, then, that the significant Catholic vote, concentrated in urban areas, might veer from the Democratic column if he lifted the embargo, Roosevelt retained the status quo until the British foreign office saw fit to alter its view, sometime after Franco's victory28.

It was Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes who recorded in his memoirs the President's comment that if the embargo was raised, as some expected in the Spring of 1938, it ‘would mean the loss of every Catholic vote next fall and that the Democratic members of Congress were jittery about it and didn't want it done’. Years later, brains truster Rexford Tugwell wrote, ‘During the (Spanish) Civil War, the Catholic interest in the United States had influenced policy against the Spanish Republicans; (Roosevelt's) compromise then had been hard to explain to liberals and he had never really tried (to explain it)’29.

What can we learn from the involvement of the Academy in these crises?

The annexation battle of 1900, and the First World War, demonstrated that the academy is as diverse a body in thinking and action as the general public. It was during the Spanish Civil War, however, that involvement occasioned relative unity. Generally, this has not been the pattern, for the Academy constitutes, overall, a babel of voices. And herein lies one of its greatest assets - the guarantee of differing views.

The positions of dissent from American foreign policy by large segments of the Academy, in two of the cases cited, illustrate the willingness of the intelligentsia to take unpopular stands. However, in involving himself in the public market, the aca-

demician moves away from society - that is, he creates conditions for public attack and, perhaps, loss of respect and popularity. The life of the intellectual is often a lonely one, as Hans Morgenthau put it for, ‘he must be the enemy of the people who tells the world things it either does not want to hear or cannot understand’30.

In at least two of the crises, particularly World War I, the government demonstrated that it could not tolerate criticism from the academy. Wilson muzzled his critics, as did members of the Academy who supported inroads into debate and contributed to the repressive Palmer days. Freedom of dissent, however, continued uninterrupted during the Civil War in Spain, as it would in World War II.

But the crises described in this paper have certain characteristics which set them apart from today's world of foreign politics. Profound alterations have occurred in the nature of foreign policy problems within the last twenty years.

Today's ‘crisis’, or better still ‘crises’, no longer have the benefit of a time boundary. There is no beginning. Perhaps, more significant, where indeed is the end? Should we, for example, suddenly attain complete military victory in Vietnam, how far have we come to a point in time which suggests that the real battle has been won?

Secondly, issues today have a quality of ‘irreversibility’; that is, certain choices once made cannot be reversed. And, perhaps most distressing, the irreversible selections of policy might not be the dramatic, decisive decisions, but rather the minor or technical motions started at a low level which inevitably lead to the fatal choice. This helps explain, though not excuse, the first Cuban intervention involving President Kennedy in 1961. Arthur Schlesinger reports that, after the Bay of Pigs fiasco, the President commented that, ‘Domestic policy can only defeat us; foreign policy can kill us’31.

Finally, we come to the major difference: the added responsibility to presidential power - the risk of holocaust. Professor Richard Neustadt depicts the role of the chief executive today as largely one of ‘risktaker’, for he lives daily with the possible consequence of a substantial nuclear delivery capability. In foreign affairs, the president has traditionally been the center

of decision-making. But today, our constitutional democracy affords him power of a vast magnitude which is difficult to visualize. It is more than a question of power and authority, for he alone must make the human judgement, constitutional restraints notwithstanding, which may immediately jeopordize at least half the world. Neustadt recently advised a Congressional committe, ‘You and I will recognize his burden intellectually; he actually experiences it emotionally. It cannot help but set him - and his needs - sharply apart from all the rest of us...’32

I am afraid that this ‘risk of war’, in the hands of the president today, signifies that the Constitution of the United States, despite its system of balanced government, of limited authority, and fenced in power, has been fundamentally altered by the technological revolution. No other individual or agency in government today can share his responsibility or can fully understand the awesome implications of this new ‘risktaker’ role of the president.

In light of these developments, what role should the Academy play in the months and years ahead?

Professor Gabriel Almond, who has studied the problem of public opinion and foreign affairs, has suggested that there are certain criteria for insuring democratic policy-making - two of which are pertinent to my theme: the autonomy and competition among various élites concerning foreign affairs; and an attentive public which is informed and interested, and before whom élite discussion and controversy take place. The Academy comprises one of the foreign policy élites, and an important one, which can help create an attentive public. If the Academy is to mobilize the public impulse toward its responsibility, then it must deal with: a public whose information is often casual, stereotyped and false; the tendency of the average American to be more concerned with immediate, private matters of daily life; the public's feeling of ineffectiveness which often contributes to passivity and apathy; and a generally impatient public which displays strong negative qualities about foreign issues.

Since there are so few groups to aid us in developing the maturity of the general public, and the articulation of its views,

it appears that the Academy's involvement in this purpose is crucial. It can help structure opinion by formulating alternative foreign policies from which the public can choose. Obviously, the layman is unequal to such a task, but with the help of the Academy, the atmosphere of competitiveness can be created, making possible the further opening of minds to new insights. Furthermore, the Academy can introduce information and critical intelligence into the stream of communication at key points in the political process33.

Let it be perfectly understood that I do not view the Academy as infallible, or as the saviour of civilization. It can err, and has. It is not the only source of information. It often speaks with many voices - and this characteristic can have its negative as well as positive consequences. It may be too distant from realism. After all, it is the decision-maker who has the power and responsibility. Often the very paradox of power makes for strained relations between the decision-maker and the intellectual, even to the point of frustration for the latter. Arthur Schlesinger writes that ‘the exercise of power is necessary to fulfill purpose, yet the world of power dooms many purposes to frustration’34. In other words, away from the point where power and information converge, the Academy may not be able to have full view of the problem, nor the alternatives possible for its solution.

But the very fact that so much is presently involved in a president's decision, and that so little can be left to the initiative and independent judgement of an apathetic public, it is crucial that we seek every source of information available. Additionally, the Academy can be of inestimable aid to the president by keeping his lines of communication open to the most recent research findings, which can only be possible in an environment in which the Academy is free to pursue new ideas, to express them publicly, and to push for their acceptance. It can provide the chief executive familiarity with possible alternatives, when confronted with a major problem. This occurred during the Cuban missile crisis of 1962. But equally as important, the Academy must always be prepared to play the role of an alert, and knowledgeable dissenter in American society.

Less than a month before his death, President John F. Kenne-

dy addressed the students at Amherst College, appealing to them to recognize and accept their responsibility. At that time he said:

‘The men who create power make an indispensable contribution to the nation's greatness. But the men who question power make a contribution just as indispensable... For they determine whether we use power or power uses us’35.

 

De voorzitter, die prof. Bellush dank zegt voor zijn voordracht, heeft in een recente uitgave van de N.R.C. gelezen, dat Nederlanders de gewoonte hebben met enige zelfoverschatting vreemde talen te spreken, ook wanneer het verstandiger zou zijn van een tolk gebruik te maken. Dit verwijt behoeft de aanwezigen niet te treffen, want mejuffrouw drs. G. de Nie zal als tolk tijdens de discussie optreden.

De discussie wordt geopend door prof. Coolhaas, die zegt, dat hem niet geheel duidelijk is, welke bevolkingsgroep prof. Bellush precies op 't oog heeft wanneer hij spreekt van ‘academy’. Worden daarmee alleen de universitaire kringen bedoeld of de intelligentsia in het algemeen?

Prof. Bellush zegt, dat hij het begrip ‘academy’ veel ruimer wil zien opgevat. Tot de ‘academy’ behoren niet alleen degenen die iets met een universiteit te maken hebben, maar alle kringen in de samenleving die een vitale rol spelen bij het bepalen van de ‘American mind’ en de ‘purposes of the nation’.

De heer Nijhoff vraagt waaraan de spreker zijn opvatting ontleent, dat de meerderheid van de Amerikaanse intellectuelen voorstander was van een politiek van onthouding met betrekking tot de Spaanse Burgeroorlog.

Prof. Bellush zegt, dat deze houding van de intellectuelen naar voren komt uit de petities die door de presidenten van de universiteiten werden getekend, uit de universitaire periodieken en uit de kranten.

Mrs. Carter-Le Mesurier wijst erop dat het boek van Mahan (The Influence of Sea Power upon History) eveneens grote invloed heeft gehad op de Britse buitenlandse politiek en bijgedragen heeft tot de uitbreiding van de Navy.

Prof. Bellush onderschrijft dit. Spreker heeft echter alleen de rol van Mahan met betrekking tot de Amerikaanse buitenlandse

politiek willen belichten. De invloed van Mahan bleef zelfs niet tot de Angelsaksische landen beperkt. Mahan's gedachtengang deed ook in Duitsland opgeld.

Mrs. Carter-Le Mesurier zegt dat keizer Wilhelm II in zijn paleis op elke garderobe een exemplaar van Mahan's boek liet leggen.

Prof. Bellush kan niet zeggen of dat juist is.

Drs. Tamse vraagt of de hoop gerechtvaardigd is, dat de leden van de ‘academy’ ook in de toekomst invloed op de regeringspolitiek zullen kunnen uitoefenen. Beschikt de ‘academy’ wel over genoeg informaties om gefundeerde kritiek naar voren te kunnen brengen wanneer de regeringspolitiek gebaseerd is op grotendeels geheime gegevens?

Prof. Bellush antwoordt dat de ‘academy’ de regeringspolitiek ook in de toekomst kritisch dient te volgen en moet trachten alternatieven te geven. De regering Kennedy had een open oor voor de ‘academy’, de huidige regering daarentegen niet. Prof. Bellush noemt Vietnam als voorbeeld. Een belangrijk deel van de politieke en militaire aktiviteiten van de V.S. in Vietnam blijft inderdaad geheim. De wetenschapsmensen zijn echter wel goed geïnformeerd over de sociaal-economische verhoudingen in dat land en kunnen de regering op dit gebied - dat zeker niet minder belangrijk is dan de politieke en militaire sector - belangrijke adviezen geven.

De heer Bezemer vreest dat prof. Bellush de aard en de omvang van de geheime gegevens, die ten grondslag liggen aan de Amerikaanse politiek, enigszins onderschat.

Prof. Bellush zegt dat de problemen in Vietnam niet in de eerste plaats van militaire aard zijn. De ‘academy’ kan de sociale, economische en historische problemen van Vietnam uitstekend begrijpen en interpreteren. Terwijl het State Department al geruime tijd wist, dat de Sowjet-Unie en China met elkaar in conflict waren geraakt, werd in officiële verklaringen nog ongenuanceerd van ‘het’ communisme gesproken. Studenten, die regelmatig kennis hadden genomen van publikaties uit Moskau, wisten toen echter ook al dat er een verwijdering tussen de Sowjet-Unie en China was ontstaan.

De voorzitter zegt de sprekers nogmaals dank voor het gebodene en spreekt er zijn vreugde over uit, dat de leden van het Historisch Genootschap in zo grote getale op deze dag van hun belangstelling hebben blijk gegeven. Te ruim 16 uur sluit hij de vergadering.


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