¹ Hull, Cordell, The Memoirs of Cordell Hull, Vol. I (2 vols.; New York: Macmillan Co., 1948), P. 387Google Scholar.

² Stanley K. Hornbeck was chief of the Far Eastern Division of the Department of State from 1929 to 1937; his papers are located at the Hoover Institution of War, Peace, and Revolution at Stanford, California. Arthur Sweetser was the highest ranking American at the League of Nations Secretariat. His papers are at the Library of Congress in Washington.

³ Certainly some members of the Department of State favored outright membership. One department memorandum of 1933 argued that every additional membership in the League of Nations wouldbe ”calculated to increase the chances of preserving peace and at the same time to improve the hope for those forces which tend toward economic welfare” and ended with the observation that ”there should be no lack of hope that absolute universality of membership is within the realm of possible early attainment.” “Economic Benefits from League Membership.” The probable author was R. Walton Moore, assistant secretary of state. Box 8, Moore Papers, Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library, Hyde Park, New York.

⁴ Historians have published surprisingly litde on the subject of United States-League of Nations relations. The standard work on the subject remains Fleming, Denna F., The United States and World Organization, 1920–1933 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1938). A second edition appeared in 1968Google Scholar.

⁵ Secretary of State Charles Evans Hughes publicly claimed that the unanswered letters had been misplaced by a clerk (New York Times, July 20, 1921) but it was hardly a convincing explanation. A Department of State memorandum of the early thirties admitted that the letters were simply ignored. “American Official Relations with the League,” 1933, Box 8, Moore Papers.

⁶ New York Times, May 20, 1921.

⁷ Fleming, pp. 219–220.

⁸ memoir, Hugh R. Wilson's, Diplomat between Wars (New York: Longmans, Green and Co., 1941) p. 191, mentions that Wilson sought the Swiss post because of its relationship to work connected with the League of NationsGoogle Scholar.

⁹ Memorandum by Jacobs, Joseph E., 03 1, 1933, League of Nations–United States cooperation file, Hornbeck PapersGoogle Scholar.

¹⁰ Green memorandum, April 13, 1933, League of Nations file, Hornbeck Papers.

¹¹ There were four Americans employed by the secretariat in 1932 compared to over 100 British subjects. By 1933 Gilbert was reporting that League of Nations officials of an “enlightened cast of mind” saw the advantages of the United States being placed in a position comparable to that of member states. Gilbert to Hull, November 24, 1933, Department of State Archives, 710.Gla/292, National Archives, Washington.

¹² Green memorandum.

¹³ Ibid.

¹⁴ Gilbert to Hornbeck, March 1, 1933, Gilbert file, Hornbeck Papers.

¹⁸ Stimson to Gilbert, February 1, 1932, SD793.94/3902B. The message was routed to Wilson through Gilbert.

¹⁶ See the transcript of the telephone conversation between Stimson and Gibson, February 2 (the date should be February 1, 1932), Box 1-G/866, Herbert Hoover Presidential Library, West Branch, Iowa.

¹⁷ Gilbert to Hornbeck.

¹⁸ Ibid.

¹⁹ Ibid.

²⁰ Wilson's papers at the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library offer no clues on this matter nor do the papers of Hugh Gibson, his close friend and fellow delegate to the disarmament conference. According to James Donnelly, a professor currently studying Gilbert while he was at the eague of Nations Council session in October 1931, Gilbert apparently never realized his own historical importance and consequently left no papers. The Norman Davis papers—Davis was also a member of the disarmament delegation—likewise offer few leads. However, a hint of Wilson's view of Gilbert can be found in Wilson's memoir, Diplomat between Wars. Although Wilson worked closely with Gilbert for seven years, Wilson never even once mentions Gilbert by name in his book; the single reference is to “the American Consul at Geneva” (p. 263). Gibson's bias against Gilbert can be inferred from his continual reference to the consul as “the boy” in the transcript of the telephone conversation with Stimson of February 1. See Box 1.G/866, Foreign Affairs, Disarmament, Herbert Hoover Papers.

²¹ Note by Hornbeck, April 17, 1933, attached to the Green memorandum, League of Nations file, Hornbeck Papers.

²² It might be asked whether Gilbert was justified in viewing the movement to change the character of the office as part of a maneuver directed against himself. There is some reason to support his belief. For instance, Green, the author of the memorandum, was a subordinate of Wilson during his tenure in Geneva and a likely partisan of the minister in his rivalry with Gilbert. Certainly, there is reason to believe that some of the men in the diplomatic service around Wilson did want Gilbert replaced. See, for instance, the Stimson-Gibson telephone transcript of February 1, 1932, Box 1-G/866, Herbert Hoover Papers.

But there were legitimate arguments for reorganizing the Geneva office, and Green was certainly in an excellent position to recognize them. To continue a step further the most serious charge that might be leveled against Gilbert is that he never seemed to recognize the manyvalid arguments for the change, preferring to see his own competence as sufficient to solve the problems concerning American representation at the League of Nations.

²³ Fosdick to Sweetser, March 22, 1933, Box 31, Arthur Sweetser Papers, Library ofCongress.

²⁴ Ibid.

²⁵ Sweetser relayed this information to Gilbert. See Gilbert to Hull, September 30, 1933, SD500.C/663. That Hull actually spoke to Sweetser is indicated in Hull to Sweetser, October4, 1933, Box 16, Sweetser Papers.

The reason why officials would have mentioned congressional authorization for the project is un-clear. The change could have been effected by executive order although senatorial approval of an ambassador would have been required as well as legislative consent for the necessary appropriations. Perhaps President Roosevelt feared to make such a potentially controversial change without making Congress jointly responsible as he was later to do with the lend-lease bill.

Roosevelt's role in this story is minor, but apparendy he was prepared to accept the proposed reorganization. Sweetser had met with him in August, and the president suggested to him that the United States assume afairer share of league expenses insofar as it cooperated in numerous league projects and that the United States extend its contacts in Geneva. See Sweetser to Roosevelt, February 18, 1937, PPR 506, Franklin D. Roosevelt Papers, Roosevelt Presidential Library; and also Hull, , Memoirs, Vol. I, P. 387Google Scholar.

²⁶ Gilbert to Hull, September 30, 1933, SD500.C/663.

²⁷ Department of State, Press Releases, September 19, 1933.

²⁸ Hull to Davis, September 20, 1933, Box 34, Cbrdell Hull Papers, Library of Congress. Italics added.

²⁹ Hull to Sweetser, October 4, 1933, Box 16, Sweetser Papers.

³⁰ Hull to Sweetser, October 25, 1933, Box 16, Sweetser Papers. Interestingly, this letter, begun “My dear Mr. Sweetser,” was written in answer to the same letter of Sweetser's to which Hull had responded on October 4 when Hull began “My dear Arthur.” Writtenin much colder tone, it undoubtedly reflected Hull's belief that Sweetser was responsible for leaking the information to Whitaker.

The origin of the leak makes good mystery, but is otherwise of only secondary importance. Sweetser undoubtedly revealed the information he was given in Washington to too many people. Both Whitaker and a United Press reporter told Gilbert that they had received a tip from a League of Nations source who had heard it from Sweetser (see Gilbert to Hull, September 30, 1933, SD500.C/663) although Whitaker had originally claimed that the news was first relayed to him from the Washington correspondent of the Herald-Tribune who was in no position to handle it from the Americancapital. Whitaker later admitted that he concocted this story to protect his Geneva sources. (See his letter to Sweetscr, November 13, 1933, Box 16, Sweetser Papers.)

Sweetser himself preferred to believe that he was not at fault, claiming to have taken precautions “which at times looked gready exaggerated” against such a leak. (Sweetser to Hull, September 26, 1933, Box 16, Sweetser Papers.) Whitaker's letter to Sweetser setting the record straight is slightly uneven. At one point he obliquely pointed to Sweetser by saying: “You had expressed the view that inevitably there must some time be expressed a regularization of our relationship to the League though you said you had no idea how soon.” But later he specifically exonerated him with: “When our news stories were denied we realized you were in an embarrassing position [as the man who had been to Washington] even though you had not been among our sources.” Of course this in no way mitigates the fact that the information could have been passed on from a second person who originally heard it from Sweetser.

But there is undoubtedly truth to something which Sweetser later wrote to Hull:

I shall make no attemptto decide where responsibility for the premature reports in question lay. All I can say is: I simply donot know. It may have been by indirect indiscretion; it may have been by mere deduction or piecing together of a score of events and tendencies. Whitaker's story, indeed, lends itself to either interpretation; it is a curious combination of probability and fancy. He himself insists not only that it was based on a variety of fact, rumour and report covering a considerable period in Geneva, Washington, andelsewhere, but that it could have been written just as well two months earlier. [Sweetser to Hull, November 23, 1933, Box 16, Sweetser Papers]

³¹ In 1935 Senator James A. Pope introduced a resolution into the Senate calling for American membership in the League of Nations without the obligations inherent in articles 10 and 16. The resolution received the active support of the League of Nations Association and like-minded groups, but it was ignored by the Department of State and was never brought to the floor for a vote. United States, Congress, Senate, Joint Resolution Providing for Membership of the United States in the League of Nations, 119, 74th Congress, 1st session, 1935, Congressional Record, Vol. 79, part 7, p. 7042Google Scholar.

³² New York Times, February 3 and 4, 1932.

³³ Sweetser had heard this during a visit to Washington in 1934. See Sweetser to Wilson, 07 11, 1934, Box 16, Sweetser PapersGoogle Scholar.

³⁴ The phrase is Frank Simond's, quoted by Walter Lippmann in ”Today and Tomorrow,” New YorkHerald-Tribune, 12 29, 1933Google Scholar.

³⁵ Hooker, Nancy H., ed., The Moffat Papers: Selections from the Diplomatic Journals of Jay Pierrepont Moffat, 1919–1943 (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1956), p. 106Google Scholar.

³⁶ Telephone conversation, October 16, 1933. Department of State, Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States, 1933, Vol. I (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1948), p. 273Google Scholar.

³⁷ Rosenman, Samuel, comp., The Public Papers and Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt, Vol. 2: The Year of Crisis, 1933 (New York: Random House, 1938), p. 547Google Scholar.

³⁸ Phillips, William Memorandum, Sepember 11, 1934, SD500.C001/991, Journal of William Phillips, 09 12, 1934, Houghton Library, Harvard University, Cambridge, MassachusettsGoogle Scholar.