Henry l stimson, p.7
Henry L. Stimson, page 7
The bitter campaign and Republican defeat in 1912 made it a difficult year and one of the most unhappy of Stimson’s life. But the political battles did not deter him from seeing through the army reforms he sought, and while the break with TR was painful, it did not take away the satisfaction he found from the job and the changes he had brought about. All his achievements, however, could be undone by the change of administrations. Stimson was, therefore, concerned over whom the new president, Woodrow Wilson, would appoint to replace him. He feared that the position might go to a political appointee or a “second-rate man” who would seek to reverse the significant changes Stimson had won and implemented. He wrote many friends who knew Wilson, supporting the importance of the War Department and maintaining “that the Secretary should be a man who represented the executive rather than the congressional standpoint.” Just before Wilson’s inauguration, the president-elect sent Hugh Wallace to visit Stimson and query him about the job in order to assist Wilson in his selection. Stimson noted that “the inquiries made showed what I suspected, that Wilson did not have the faintest idea of what the War Department was doing.” Wallace returned two days later with more questions. As a result, Wallace told Stimson that “Wilson had completely changed his mind and had decided to appoint a man on the lines which [Stimson] suggested.”31
Stimson was greatly pleased when Wilson selected Lindley Garrison, a former judge, as his successor. The two men met for several days to go over the various issues of the department, and Garrison indicated his support for the “cardinal matters” of reform instituted by Stimson. Garrison agreed with Stimson concerning the central importance of the General Staff, short-term enlistments, the creation of a reserve, tactical reorganization, the closing of undesirable posts, and the consolidation of bases. He even kept General Wood as his Chief of Staff. As Stimson wrote in June 1913, Garrison had supported him on all the major points, and he accepted the army reorganization plan “as fate accompli [sic] and seemed very grateful for it.”32
Colonel Stimson
The outbreak of the Great War in August 1914 shocked the Western world and had an immediate impact upon the United States. To Stimson, it marked the end of an era and the beginning of a new period in American history by bringing the United States directly into European affairs. It also reconfirmed his internationalism and his conviction that the United States had had to modernize its military, and it reinforced his sense of accomplishment in having tried to prepare the nation for the role of world leader. He would devote the rest of his life to making the nation aware of the changed realities of international events and their impact on the United States and grappling with the problems of this new national status.
From the beginning of the fighting, Stimson’s sympathies, like much of the nation’s, were clearly with the Allies and their cause. He had learned as a child from his father and the time they spent in Europe to distrust the German Empire, while at the same time he became an admirer of France and Great Britain. He also fully supported Wilson on neutrality in the early years of the war. While he denounced the Germans for their violations of neutral rights, he still agreed with the president that it was important for the United States to stay out of the fighting as long as its rights as a neutral were respected. He was, however, willing to use force if the Germans violated those rights. As he declared in a speech at New York’s Carnegie Hall in June 1915, “The progress of our race towards civilization has not been along the smooth pathway of logic. We have not succeeded in abolishing war in the name of its inhumanity and in substituting for it a rule of peace and reason. Instead of that, we have struggled along, gradually narrowing and restricting the area of war as we have grown less and less willing to endure its ravages. . . .Now by far the greatest advance which has been thus slowly made in putting brakes on the savagery of war has been in the development of the rights of the neutral . . . buffers of civilization against the shocks of war.” Like Wilson, he believed that, for the time being, the United States had to remain neutral to become the upholder of civilization and allow for the continuation of the gradual progress toward peace.33
Stimson retained these views for both the ideological reasons noted in his speech and from practical concerns. Few people were more aware than the ex-secretary of war of how poorly prepared the United States was for a major war. For all his efforts and success at reform, the American Army was still unprepared and ill-equipped for battle against a European power. Stimson, therefore, became an immediate advocate for more military improvements and a leader in the movement for preparedness. He supported General Wood in his efforts at Plattsburgh, New York, to train civilian leaders to become officers, visiting the camp in 1914 and 1915, and enrolling himself for a month in 1916. Moreover, he called for a system of universal military training. Stimson argued that the advances in military weapons and tactics since the Civil War “made it necessary, in order to adequately defend the country, to begin training one’s army before the outbreak of war.” Stimson performed so well at Plattsburgh that he was pronounced fit for service despite being almost fifty and nearly blind in one eye. His efforts to rally the nation to greater military spending and a universal draft brought about a reconciliation in 1915 with Theodore Roosevelt, who was also a leading proponent of preparedness. Stimson considered Roosevelt’s efforts to rally the country to a stronger stand against Germany as one of his greatest moments.34
From the outset, Stimson saw the war as being about more than the rights of neutrals. As he had noted in his Carnegie Hall speech, Stimson perceived the fundamental issue of the war as a question of the survival of democracy and civilization. He wrote in 1914 that he was glad to see that most Americans sided with the Allies, for “they are fighting the battle of civilization to which we are committed. Germany is seeking to overthrow the fundamental postulates of that civilization.” He also praised the manner by which Wilson had “phrased his expressions of neutrality.” By 1916, however, Stimson believed that war was inevitable, that Wilson was not taking a strong enough stand on preparedness, and that the president would make a poor leader in the troubled times ahead. He feared Wilson would back a congressional proposal to use the National Guard as the vehicle to expand the nation’s forces rather than the regular army and the reserves. When Secretary of War Garrison resigned in early 1916 over Wilson’s failure to oppose the congressional plan, Stimson wrote a series of highly critical letters to the New York Times in which he made the case for expanding the army and pointed out the flaws in the bill to “federalize” the National Guard. Moreover, he had reached the conclusion that a German victory would be “disastrous to our foreign trade, our time-honored Monroe doctrine in the Western hemisphere, our relation to Mexico and the Panama Canal, our Republican iristitutions or our national solidarity as an English-speaking race.” Stimson now saw Wilson’s unwillingness to make an alliance with England and France as “directly postponing the cause of the world’s peace.”35
When Wilson was reelected, Stimson believed it was his duty, along with all Americans, to support the president, and willingly embarked on a two-week tour of the Midwest to speak on behalf of preparedness and the basic issues of the war. With Germany’s resumption of unrestricted submarine warfare, Stimson’s position and the president’s once again became closely aligned. Stimson no longer spoke about neutrality as the main issue. “America,” he declared, “is not going to war with Germany merely because, as one of the accidents of the great struggle raging across the water, we have suffered an incidental injury. . . . It is because we realize that upon the battlefields of Europe there is at stake the future of the free institutions of the world.” The war stemmed from German autocracy, Prussianism, and an erroneous philosophy that made the use of war the basic policy of the state. Violations of the rights of neutrals were a result of this philosophy as well as the German lack of respect for or belief in individual rights versus the state. “This war had made clear,” Stimson observed, “that it is the conception of the sanctity of the rights of the individual, in relation to his government, which is the life-preserver of civilization against not only absolutism but all the cruelty and barbarism” that comes from autocracy. Stimson was convinced that war was the only way to stop German militarism and, in Wilson’s words, make the world “safe for democracy.” Stimson fully endorsed this view and believed that “into such a struggle a man or a nation may well go with lofty faith and burning ardor.“36
Colonel Stimson during World War I. Henry Lewis Stimson Papers, Manuscripts and Archives, Yale University Library
Stimson, having called first for preparedness and then for war, now acted on his own advice, and at the age of forty-nine he enlisted in the army. For Stimson, this was an opportunity to overcome the disappointment of missing service in the Spanish-American War and to gain the actual combat experience that he believed would allow him to speak with more authority on military and diplomatic issues. Herbert Hoover tried to recruit him to join his relief organization, but Stimson declined. He wrote Hoover that “for six years I have been studying and thinking in terms of military problems against the inevitable crisis I have foreseen coming . . . and for two years I have been preaching to other men the duty of military service.” As a result, “I could not live comfortably with my own self-respect if I did not take my share in the difficult and dangerous work that there is before this country now on the other side of the Atlantic.” Using his numerous contacts in the military, Stimson was commissioned in May 1917 and assigned to the War College in Washington with an understanding that he might be able to join a field artillery unit. Stimson had, as early as 1914, and again in 1916, made serious inquiries concerning joining the army when it appeared that tensions with Mexico might escalate into armed conflict. He made arrangements through Crowder and Wood so he could gain an officer’s commission and used these same channels in 1917 to obtain his new position.37 Stimson drilled as an artillery officer early mornings and evenings while serving as a staff intelligence officer during the day. He made no secret of his extra training and his desire to become a field artillery officer so, toward the end of the summer, he was pleased to learn that his name was on the list of officers who were being recommended for promotions and assignments to the field.
The presence of a former secretary of war in the army presented something of a problem for the Wilson administration, and the current secretary of war, Newton Baker, removed Stimson’s name from a list of officers recommended for field service. Even with the military expanding rapidly and a shortage of experienced officers, Baker feared that Stimson was just using his influence to gain a position for future political glory. In late August, Stimson requested a meeting with Baker and also met with Chief of Staff Hugh Scott to make his case for field service. He assured Baker that he had no political ambition and that his only desire was to serve. Within an hour of his meetings, Stimson was promoted to lieutenant colonel and assigned as second in command to the 305th Regiment, Field Artillery, 77th Division.38
Stimson’s service with the 305th confirmed for him the correctness of all his policies as secretary of war. The military had a clear plan and was prepared to expand rapidly by training new recruits to meet the demands of the national emergency. He found the officers in his outfit, as he expected after the military reforms he passed and his experience at Plattsburgh, to be well trained, innovative, and energetic. They were able quickly to turn the conscripted soldiers, whom he found resilient, resourceful, and eager participants from all walks of life, into quality soldiers. The organization and flexibility that Stimson had provided the army was working as well as he could expect, and Colonel Stimson was anxious to lead his troops into battle and contribute to the great cause he believed the nation was fighting for.
Stimson, however, was sent to Europe ahead of his regiment first to join the 51st, a Highland Division of the British Army, for further instruction, and then to attend a school at Langres, France, for new officers. Upon completion of his training, he was reunited with his outfit in France, where they completed their final training and were ordered to the line in July 1918. Stimson’s tour of duty at the front was uneventful. His unit’s sector was quiet, and after only three weeks Stimson was ordered home to assume command and training of a newly formed artillery unit. Although this new assignment was a tribute to Stimson’s abilities, it meant that he never faced the actual combat with his regiment that he desired. German resistance collapsed that fall, and the war ended before Stimson could return to France with his new unit. The Colonel was discharged from the army that December, greatly pleased with his service and the great military victory of his nation. Stimson would later recall that his experience during World War I was his “greatest lesson in American democracy.”39
The vexing question for the postwar period was the means the United States should employ to best protect and further that democracy. Woodrow Wilson placed his hopes on the creation of a League of Nations that would provide the mechanism for disarmament, arbitration, and the peaceful resolution of international disagreements. Stimson, along with Root and numerous other leading Republican internationalists, also supported the idea of a League of Nations and American participation in it, but he had concerns about specific aspects of the Covenant of the League contained in the Treaty of Versailles. The main lessons of World War I were, to Stimson, easily learned. The United States could not be isolated from world affairs and must assume the responsibility of world leadership. As he wrote in February 1919, “The time is surely coming when in international law an act of aggression by one nation upon another will be regarded as an offense against the community of nations.” It was important that the United States “take advantage of this time to help move the world along towards that condition of development.”40
Stimson disagreed with Wilson over Article X of the Covenant and its provision that all member nations were obligated to “respect and preserve as against external aggression the territorial integrity and existing political integrity of all members of the League.” To Stimson and Root, there were two problems with this provision. First, it appeared to them impractical, as they doubted that the United States would honor its commitment, for example, if there were a renewal of fighting in the Balkans. Such a failure would then doom the League as a viable international organization. Second, it “showed a terrible lack of appreciation of the political realities of the situation.” Stimson believed that the lessons of internationalism had to be learned gradually over time by the people of the United States. This jibed with his consistent belief in gradual change, and the principle that people “are controlled not by argument or reason but by association, tradition, inheritance, habit and the consequent emotions that go with these.” A more general charter, which allowed the League to develop its program and take on added obligations as it became more accepted, seemed wiser. In this manner, Stimson thought that the “slowly growing spirit of international responsibility might be fostered, unchecked by the disillusionment of broken pledges.”41
Stimson, therefore, joined with Root to try for passage of the Treaty of Versailles and American membership in the League by attaching a series of reservations to the treaty that would address these concerns. The two men talked often throughout the first half of the year about what changes were needed to make the League of Nations acceptable to both them and the American people. In June 1919, Root submitted his reservations to the Senate, the primary one being that the United States could disclaim all obligation to honor any articles it found objectionable even while still ratifying the Treaty of Versailles and American membership in the League. Stimson was confident that moderate Republicans and President Wilson could agree on a compromise that was satisfactory to both sides. Root’s reservations, however, were changed and augmented by Republican “irreconcilables.” Led by Massachusetts Senator and Chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Henry Cabot Lodge, the “irreconcilables” wanted to amend the treaty fundamentally and defeat its primary purpose of a United States entry into the League. Stimson found Lodge’s additions wholly unsatisfactory, “very harsh and unpleasant in tone,” and the Republican Party the main stumbling block to the ratification of a revised treaty.42
Instead of pushing the members of his own party harder for a more compromising stance, Stimson and the other leading internationalists in the Republican Party made what Stimson characterized as a “serious mistake” and a “blunder.” After months of political debate, and Wilson’s refusal, in the face of Lodge’s challenge, to compromise on any aspects of the treaty, they decided that the best course of action toward securing American membership in the League of Nations was a Republican victory in the 1920 election. After failing to secure the nomination for Leonard Wood, Stimson and Root supported Warren Harding on the theory that his election would mean the ratification of the treaty with Root’s reservations concerning Article X. Furthermore, Stimson joined with thirty other leading Republicans, including Charles Evans Hughes and Herbert Hoover, in signing a public statement drafted by Root that advised voters that the election of Harding was the surest way to obtain American membership in the League. To vote for the Democrats was to be asked to accept the League with the unlimited obligations of Article X, while a vote for Harding would mean membership with the proper reservations. As Stimson noted in his memoirs, “events soon proved that these men were deceived” and their faith in Harding unfounded. The new president had never actually supported American membership in the League, and the United States never joined. For Stimson, the “rejection of the League was ... the greatest error made by the United States in the twentieth century.”43
