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An Imperialist and the First World War: the Case of Albert J. Beveridge

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 January 2009

J. A. Thompson
J. A. Thompson
Affiliation:
St Catharine's College, Cambridge
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Extract

A difficulty which faces students of American thought about foreign affairs is the relation between general principles and views of the world on the one hand and attitudes to specific issues of policy on the other. Since the pioneering work of Robert E. Osgood, historians have emphasized the important distinction between those whose primary concern is the protection of American national interests within the existing system of power politics, and those who seek above all to reform the international order in accordance with American liberal ideals. In recent years much attention has been paid to the influence of economic considerations, particularly the desire to promote American foreign trade. However, the relative weight attached to national security, liberal idealism and American economic interests overseas by individual Americans does not entirely account for their differing attitudes to particular questions. For in crucial debates, such as those over the Philippines and the League of Nations, each of these considerations was invoked by some on both sides of the argument. To some extent, the older and more superficial distinction between ‘isolationism’ and ‘anti-isolationism’, while concealing the variety of premises upon which either position could be founded, provides a better basis for predicting the readiness of Americans to favour particular foreign enterprises or commitments. Yet adherence even to these broad traditions has been far from consistent. Thus, while it would be natural to assume that the imperialists of 1898–1900 were more likely than their opponents to favour American intervention in the First World War, it is not clear that this was the case.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of American Studies , Volume 5 , Issue 2 , August 1971 , pp. 133 - 150
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1971

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References

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20 The Russian Advance, p. 148, also pp. 222–3, 340, 358–60, 445–6.

21 Beveridge had undertaken the journey confident that ‘this trip will make me easily the authority on the Orient in American public life’. (Beveridge to Albert Shaw, 2 May 1901, Box 282).

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32 Draft typescript of What is Back of the War, ch. 16 (Box 333).

33 The Outlook, 21 April 1915, p. 899. Cf. ‘Preparedness for Peace’.

34 Beveridge to John C. Shaffer, 1 April 1915 (Box 280).

35 Beveridge to Shaffer, 7 April 1915 (Box 280).

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39 What is Back of the War, p. 429.

40 Beveridge to Albert Shaw, 13 February 1917 (Box 283).

41 Beveridge to Shaffer, 6 March 1916 (Box 281).

42 ‘Preparedness for Peace’, p. 50. See also Beveridge to Shaffer, 6 March 1916 (Box 281), Speech [to National Convention of School Superintendents, Kansas City, Mo.], 27 February 1917 (Box 306).

43 ‘American Interests’, p. 5.

44 ‘American Interests’, p. 6; Speech to National Booksellers' Association, Chicago, 18 May 1916 (Box 305).

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46 ‘The League to Enforce Peace’, pp. 10–11; ‘Preparedness for Peace’, p. 6.

47 The quotations are from Beveridge's MSS notes on the League to Enforce Peace, made in 1916 (Box 305). See also ‘The League to Enforce Peace’; Speech, 20 March 1917 (Box 306).

48 Beveridge to Shaw, 13 February 1917 (Box 283).

49 Speech at the Flag Raising of the Pennsylvania Shop Employees, 14 April 1917 (Box 306); Beveridge to Shaffer, 6 September 1918 (Box 281).

50 Beveridge to Shaw, 9 July 1917 (Box 283); ‘Trade After the War’, p. 22.

51 ‘Trade After the War’, at p. 23.

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53 Congressional Record, 9 January 1900, pp. 710, 711. Cf. ‘It is said that “self-government” and “non-interference” and many other excellent things are American characteristics; and so they are. But the American characteristic is adaptability’ (The Russian Advance, p. 207).

54 Beveridge to George W. Perkins, 3 May 1898, quoted in Bowers, , Beveridge, p. 70.Google Scholar

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59 Beveridge to Albert Shaw, 20 August 1915 (Box 283). The documents which fell into the hands of the United States Secret Service on 23 July 1915, when Dr Heinrich F. Albert, Commercial Attaché in the German Embassy, left his brief case in a New York elevated train, revealed that German agents had subsidized and encouraged pro-German propaganda in the United States.

60 Lorimer to Beveridge, 28 March 1916.

61 Beveridge to Sullivan [December 1914] (Box 328).

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64 Bergson to Beveridge, 4 March 1915 (Box 329); Grey's and Trevelyan's corrections to Beveridge's drafts (Boxes 333, 329). Lord Bryce and Sir Gilbert Parker also objected that Beveridge had misrepresented their views. See Bryce to Beveridge, 15 March 1915; Parker to Beveridge, 16 March 1915 (Box 329).

65 Unpublished interview concerning What is Back of the War (Box 330).

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67 Notebook, pp. 17–21 at pp. 20, 19, 17 (Box 337). See also Diary, 12–27 December 1914 (Box 329).

68 Beveridge to Shaffer, 6 March 1916 (Box 281).

69 Beveridge to Shaffer, 6 March 1916; ‘American Interests’, p. 4.

70 ‘Our business men propose to build up a power which will be our chief antagonist in the trade contests of the future’, he wrote concerning the loans to the Allies. ‘It is…so shortsighted, so foolish, and so wicked that it is difficult for my mind to comprehend it.’ Beveridge to Shaffer, 6 March 1916.

71 Beveridge to Albert Shaw, 9 July 1917 (Box 283); to Shaffer, 3 August 1917 (Box 281).

72 MSS notes on ‘League to Enforce Peace’ (Box 305); ‘American Interests’, pp. 3–6 at p. 5. See also speech, 20 March 1917 (Box 306).

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75 In correspondence with John C. Shaffer, his chief political confidant, Beveridge often revealed his concern with tactical political considerations. See, for example, Beveridge to Shaffer, 27 March 1906, [July ?] 1908, 28 March 1912 (Boxes 279, 280). Cf. Levine, Daniel, Varieties of Reform Thought (Madison, Wisconsin, 1964), pp. 73–6Google Scholar. On Beveridge's presidential ambitions, see Bowers, , Beveridge, pp. 161–2, 171.Google Scholar

76 In 1908, for example, he had openly fought in the Senate for the Roosevelt Administration's battleship-building programme, despite the prevailing sentiment in Indiana. See Bowers, , Beveridge, pp. 277–81.Google Scholar

77 See the table in Cooper, , The Vanity of Power, p. 224.Google Scholar

78 In assessing ‘opposition to potential overseas involvement’, Cooper analyzes, four crucial votes in the Senate—on the Hitchcock amendment to prohibit munitions shipments, 18 February 1915; on the Gore resolution to prohibit travel on armed merchant ships, 3 March 1916; on the severance of relations with Germany, 7 February 1917; and the war resolution, 4 April 1917 (The Vanity of Power, pp. 221, 239.) On none of these occasions did an Indiana senator support the ‘isolationist’ or ‘neutralist’ position. (Congressional Record, 63rd Congress, 3rd session, 18 February 1915, p. 4016; 64th Congress, Ist session, 3 March 1916, p. 3465; 64th Congress, 2nd session, 7 February 1917, p. 2750; 65th Congress, 1st session, 4 April 1917, p. 261.) The replacement of the two Democrats, Benjamin J. Shively (who died in 1916) and John W. Kern (who was not elected to the 65th Congress), by the Republicans, James E. Watson and Harry New, did not make any difference.

79 Shaffer to Beveridge, 14 July 1915 (Box 280); Lorimer to Beveridge, 30 March 1916.

80 Beveridge to Shaffer, 4 May 1916 (Box 281).

81 Shaffer to C. A. McCulloch, 27 July 1918; McCulloch to Shaffer, 30 July 1918 (Box 281).

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84 E.g. William Allen White to Theodore Roosevelt, 15 January 1915 (White Papers, Library of Congress); Emporia Gazette, 8 April 1915; Russell, Charles Edward, ‘No More Foes Without—and None Within’, Pearson's Magazine, 06 1915, pp. 691–9 at p. 694Google Scholar; Harper's Weekly, 29 January 1916, p. 99.

85 Walter Lippmann argued that ‘for many of us, indeed, it is just this internal excellence of Germany which makes Belgium and the Lusitania unbearable outrages’. (The New Republic, 11 March 1916, p. 158.)

86 E.g. Speech to Republicans of Denver, Colorado, 12 February 1912 (Box 304).

87 ‘Preparedness for Peace’, p. 48.

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94 Osgood attempts to reconcile Beveridge's 1898 vision of ‘an English-speaking people's league of God’ with his opposition to the first Hay-Pauncefote treaty by arguing that ‘the very spirit of intense, blindly aggressive national egoism, which was the substance behind his vague talk of an English-speaking people's league, precluded any specific and practical collaboration with Great Britain or any other nation’ (Ideals and Self-Interest, pp. 72–3). But, while Beveridge was always a jealous nationalist, there seems little doubt that he also changed his mind about England. He did not after 1899 indulge even in ‘vague talk’ of an English-speaking league, and by 1916, as we have seen, he was very critical of those who did.

95 This was also, of course, the time of the Boer War. Like most Americans, including Roosevelt eventually, Beveridge was not impressed with either the efficiency or the justice of the British campaign in South Africa. The intensity and persistence of Beveridge's animus, however, suggests that while the Boer War provided additional justification for his Anglophobia it was not sufficient to account for it.

96 Beveridge took pride in being a self-made man and wrote a book in the success guide genre. See The Young Man and the World (New York, 1905).Google Scholar

97 Bowers, , Beveridge, pp. 115–16Google Scholar. Lodge explained to Roosevelt that Beveridge ‘arrived here with a very imperfect idea of the rights of seniority in the Senate, and with a large idea of what he ought to have’ (Lodge to Roosevelt, 13 December 1899, Roosevelt-Lodge Correspondence, vol. I, p. 427).Google Scholar

98 Rothman, David J., Politics and Power: The United States Senate, 1869–1901 (Cambridge, Mass., 1966), pp. 55–7, 144–5.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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100 ‘It is too much to expect you to keep in mind the different speeches that I make; thy servant is not a Beveridge and does not expect such things.’ Roosevelt to Lodge, 16 October 1906. Roosevelt-Lodge Correspondence, vol. 2, p. 247.Google Scholar

101 Beveridge to Shaffer, 25 May 1907 (Box 280).