Empire Without Tears: Chapter 5

Empire Without Tears: America's Foreign Relations 1921-1933

Temple University Press

1987

5. After the Fall

In March 1929 Herbert Clark Hoover was inaugurated as the thirty-first president of the United States. For the previous eight years he had served Harding and Coolidge as secretary of commerce and had been a major force in shaping the domestic and foreign policies of the United States. One of the principal architects of the cooperative association of government and the private sector which had worked so well throughout the 1920s, he promised to lead the American people to new heights of prosperity. A Quaker, reluctant to use force as an instrument of power, he was the ideal choice to maintain and even expand the American empire-without tears. A prosperous America would guide the world.

The stock market responded favorably to Hoover's election and the number of Americans prepared to risk their savings—and other people's money—on the continued growth of the economy increased. Problems of shrinking agricultural markets, overextended holding companies, unproductive foreign loans were little noticed. In September, however, the market wavered. On October 23, 1929, the ticker tape at the New York Stock Exchange ran 104 minutes late as the day ended and the market fell sharply. On October 24, the market collapsed in the face of panic selling. The Great Depression had begun its withering course. As the economy stumbled, the American presence around the world began to contract.

Increasingly over the next several years, the Great Depression dominated every aspect of American life. Nothing that occurred anywhere in the world could compete for the attention of American leaders and their people. No foreign threat could compare with the danger the Depression posed to the survival of American institutions and values-to democracy in America. By 1931 even Henry Stimson, the secretary of state, was preoccupied with the search for the road to recovery.

The apparatus of foreign affairs was affected negatively by the economic crisis, but not as seriously as might have been anticipated. The number of foreign service officers fell off sharply in the early 1930s, declining by about 10 percent as those who retired or resigned went unreplaced. Pay cuts do not seem to have affected the quality of the service. Those with independent incomes, a class still overrepresented among career diplomats, hardly noticed. Others, less fortunate, were not eager to compete with the 15 million able-bodied Americans already unemployed. The resignation rate throughout the 1 930s was remarkably low, barely more than 1 percent. Nonetheless, a reduced number of officers had to staff a substantial increase in American embassies and legations, up from 47 in 1920 to 58 in 1930.

Under extraordinarily adverse conditions, Department of Commerce attache's worked frenetically and futilely to promote American exports as nation after nation acted to protect home markets, as economic nationalism prevailed in the depression-wracked world markets. When American agricultural exports shrank in the late 1 920s, even before the crash, the Department of Agriculture followed Commerce's lead. Beginning in 1930, Agriculture posted specialists in the embassies and legations in the hope of finding markets for a burgeoning surplus.

American military power fell off only slightly in absolute terms, but fared less well relative to increases in Japanese naval power-and was inadequate for the crisis that developed in Manchuria in 1931. U.S. Army personnel stood at 136,547 in 1933, down only about 1 percent from the average of the previous ten years. The Air Corps expanded between 1927 and 1930. Expansion stopped in 1932, but the number of planes, officers, and enlisted men was only slightly short of what had been projected in the mid-1920s. Naval leaders were pleased with the efficiency of their own air arm. On the other hand, naval and marine personnel had dropped about 4 percent in 1933 from the average for the previous decade. Worst of all, from the perspective of the admirals and the Navy League, not a single new ship was authorized during the Hoover administration. Moreover, at the London Naval Conference of 1930, the United States accepted a cruiser ratio that outraged American naval officers.

In sum, even during the Depression, the apparatus with which the United States, as a great power, maintained its interests around the world, remained in place. The collapse of the economy affected the will more than the means to act abroad as the nation turned inward to concentrate on the suffering of its own people.

The most obvious impact of the Great Depression on America's foreign relations came in economic affairs. As late as 1930, a number of corporations were still investing heavily overseas. Mining companies continued to expand their operations in Latin America until the bottom dropped out of commodity prices. In 1930 ITT gained control of the Peruvian telephone system, won major concessions in Chile and Rumania, and an important share of the opportunities available in Turkey and China. Trade with Soviet Russia did not decline until 1932. But in every other respect, retrenchment was sharp and painful by 1931.

As the economic situation in the United States worsened, most corporations concentrated on domestic activity. The level of world trade declined as nation after nation erected trade barriers to protect home industries. On one of the rare occasions when a thousand American economists agreed on any subject, that number petitioned Hoover with a warning against signing the Smoot-Hawley tariff of 1930. He defied their collective judgment and the retaliatory action they predicted was taken throughout the industrial world, most painfully for American exporters by Canada and Europe generally.

From 1919 to 1930 American business had invested $11.6 billion overseas. Beginning in 1931 there were no new investments, and a reverse flow began. Money previously invested in Africa, Asia, Canada, Europe, Latin America, and the Middle East was called back. In part the reverse flow was caused by the need for capital at home; in part it was withdrawn because of growing unrest overseas: Japanese actions in China; revolutions in Latin America; the economic, social, and political disintegration of Germany. American firms abroad found the climate less attractive than it had been during the 1920s and feared they could not prosper. In 1932 stock market analysts warned investors against firms with large overseas operations, but a few firms, especially in Great Britain, expanded in the face of high tariffs rather than abandon the local market.

The bankers stopped lending money to foreign governments in 1929. Congress closed the door to foreign imports in 1930. By 1931 American tourists had all but disappeared from the world's grand hotels, spas, casinos, and exotic sites. Corporate investment abroad ended. The result was an extraordinary drop in the number of dollars available abroad-a 68 percent decline in the dollars whose circulation had kept the world economic system afloat in the 1920s. Much of what was left was consumed by fixed obligations such as war debts. Virtually nothing was available for the purchase of American goods. And the whole system collapsed.

Fear that a new round of defaults would further under-mine the disintegrating financial system of Europe and accelerate the rate of bank failure in the United States forced Hoover to ease his position on war debts and reparations. Neither Lamont nor Stimson had succeeded in winning him over to the cancellation side of the debate, and he had long been wary of the domestic political consequences of forgiving America's debtors. By 1931, however, it was apparent that Germany was again on the verge of defaulting in reparations payments to France, that the French were prepared to accept financial chaos in Germany, and that the result would be a string of failures among American banks, to which the Germans were deeply indebted.

U.S. Exports of Leading Manufactured Goods ($ millions)


YEAR	IRON/STEEL	MACHINERY	AUTOS/PARTS	TOTAL

1922	$136.2	$233.9	$103.2	$473.3
1929	200.1	604.4	541.4	1,345.9
1932	28.9	131.3	76.3	236.5

Source: U.S. Department of Commerce, The United States in the World Economy(Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1943), p.59.

Hoover needed little instruction to recognize the danger and called for a moratorium on payment of all international debts-a none too subtle admission of the long-denied connection between war debts and reparations. The United States would claim no payments on war debts for a year if France and others would agree to forego reparations payments for a like period. It was a brave move by Hoover, doubtless long overdue. French procrastination rendered the gesture all but futile—as it likely would have been in any event. At home Hoover's action won wide approval, but the moratorium did not prevent the cycle Hoover dreaded. The horrors of the Depression intensified.

III

Hoover and many of his contemporaries had envisioned a world in which prosperity, fueled by the American economy, would mute the issues that divided nations and the peoples within them. Everyone's standard of living would rise, peace would prevail, and funds wasted on military expenditures could be put to productive use. From the moment of his election, Hoover attempted to realize that vision. In his faith in the curative powers of the American economy, his reluctance to intervene in the affairs of other nations, and his commitment to disarmament, he epitomized-perhaps was a caricature of—the American political culture of the 1920s. Certainly there were few presidential candidates whose election would have been more gratifying to the American peace movement.

Hoover was particularly displeased by the enormous sums the United States continued to spend on warships, despite the naval limitation agreement of 1922. Throughout his presidency, he was at war with the Navy League, an organization committed to the enlargement of the U.S. Navy, ostensibly to maintain American seapower in a hostile world. The Navy League had been worried by Coolidge as well, by his opposition to naval construction on economic grounds, but had gained support for its objectives after the failure of the Geneva Conference of 1927. At Geneva, poor preparation and Anglo-American differences over cruiser ratios and sizes had precluded agreement. An Anglo-French naval agreement in 1928 further irritated Americans and aided Navy League lobbyists in Congress. In February 1929 the Senate approved a bill to build fifteen new cruisers. Navy League supporters and lobbyists were ecstatic. In March 1929 Hoover became president, determined to see that not one of those fifteen cruisers was ever built.

The cruiser bill of 1929 demonstrated to the British that agreement with the United States could no longer be avoided. Great Britain too had a leader, Ramsay MacDonald, who was determined to avoid a costly arms race which Britain could not win. The United States would have to be granted parity. For three months, beginning in late January 1930, the great naval powers met in London in an effort to extend limits on shipbuilding to cruisers, destroyers, and submarines.

For the Americans and the British negotiators, the top priority was an end to Anglo-American discord. However grumpily, the British admirals were forced to approve the American demand for a rough parity in cruisers. The Japanese, French, and Italians, on the other hand, were determined to enlarge their fleets relative to the two leading naval powers. Anglo-American efforts to extend the 5:5:3 tonnage ratio applied to capital ships in the 1922 agreement to cruisers in 1930 defied reality. In 1922 the American and British battleships outweighed their Japanese rivals by approximately the 5:3 ratio the Japanese accepted. In 1930, Japanese cruiser tonnage was in fact double that of the American cruisers. The Japanese were being asked to stop building until the Americans caught up and surpassed them. Faced with Anglo-American collusion, a well-intentioned Japanese government agreed to a compromise, accepting cruiser inferiority on a 10:10:7 basis instead of the requested 10:10:6.

As is usually the case when political leaders make decisions in military affairs, the professional naval people in Great Britain, Japan, and the United States insisted they had been betrayed. Charged with the defense of their country's interests, military leaders are rarely satisfied unless assured of a preponderance of power so great there can be no doubt of their success. A reflexive quest for assured success rather than sinister motives usually explains constant military demands for more. In 1930, as in 1922, the naval building limitation agreement provided adequately for the security of all the leading naval powers. It was of less enduring value in part because of the overweening aspirations of Japanese military leaders, and in large part because Hoover misread its significance. Unwilling to spend on "unproductive" warships, he deceived himself into believing that the London agreement ended the naval race, dispelled the fears and suspicions that bred war—and that there was no need for the United States to build even those ships allowed it under the agreement. Not even the crisis that exploded in Mukden in 1931 moved Hoover to authorize a single new ship.

Relations between the United States and Japan had improved markedly as a result of the agreements reached at Washington in 1922 and the preceding agreement on the creation and modus operandi of the new China consortium. The generous American response to the earthquake disaster of 1923 may even have cushioned slightly the shock both the Japanese and Charles Evans Hughes received in 1924 when Congress overrode Hughes's efforts and passed new exclusion laws aimed at Japanese emigrants. (At Lamont's urging, J. P. Morgan and Company contributed mightily to Japan's development in the 1920s.) To be sure, the cooperative policy to which the Great Powers were committed in China broke down in the face of the Chinese revolution, and the actions of the Japanese army in Shantung in 1927 raised apprehensions. By the summer of 1931, however, American leaders were pleased and complacent about relations between Japan and the United States. Shidehara Kijuro was the Japanese foreign minister and he was admired and respected by Western diplomats who had worked with him since the days of the Washington Conference. His policies were restrained, threatened no American interests, and suggested that he had the Japanese military under control. The success of the London Conference of 1930 persuaded Hoover and his advisers that rivalry with Japan was not going to be a concern for the foreseeable future. As the woes of the Depression multiplied at home, little thought was given to conditions in East Asia—not even to warnings that the Japanese military in Manchuria were growing restive.

The Japanese had established their presence in Manchuria in the course of defeating Russia in 1905. China retained nominal control over the region, its three northeastern provinces. For the next quarter of a century, resisting all external pressures, Japan developed Manchuria and integrated it into the Japanese economic and strategic systems. Manchuria was the front line of defense against Russia, and it was the principal and most reliable source of the iron and coal that propelled Japanese industry into its primary position in Asia. Military or civilian, moderate or extremist, all Japanese leaders, including Shidehara, viewed Manchuria as a vital interest and were committed to keeping it under Japanese control. As befitted a diplomatist, Shidehara insisted on negotiation to preserve Japan's interests. Not surprisingly, the Japanese army was frequently impatient with talk and had begun straining at the leash as Chiang Kai-shek's government began to impinge on territory Japanese officers saw as akin to a feudal fiefdom. A plot to take over Manchuria had very nearly been executed in 1928, at the time of the murder of Chang Tso-lin. The plans were still on the books in September 1931.

In March 1931 the American minister to China, Nelson T. Johnson, wrote that Manchuria was becoming more Chinese with each passing day. The Japanese army shared his assessment, and despaired of Shidehara's efforts. On the evening of September 18, 1931, Japanese troops sprang into action. To allege Chinese provocation, the Japanese set off an explosion in the vicinity of the Japanese-owned and operated South Manchuria Railroad. Responding to the "provocation," Japanese soldiers drove Chinese authorities out of the city of Mukden and began the conquest of Manchuria.

The Mukden Incident occurred at an inauspicious moment for the Chinese government. It was already mired in a series of domestic struggles as Kuomintang secessionists at Canton and Communist rebels in Kiangsi taxed Chiang's political and military acumen. Informed of Japanese operations at Mukden, Chiang chose to concentrate his efforts against the Communists. A campaign against the Japanese would have to wait until he had eliminated the internal threat. Attempting to localize the incident to Mukden, he ordered Chinese forces in Manchuria not to resist. On the diplomatic front, he appealed to Great Britain, the League of Nations, and the United States to stop Japan.

Manchuria and Adjacent Area

Deep in the throes of the Depression, the nations of the West were not quick to rally to China's support. When news of Japanese actions penetrated the gloom in Washington, American leaders prayed the incident would prove to be an isolated matter. They wanted no distraction in their search for an escape from economic stagnation, and put their faith in Shidehara.

Stimson, having little choice, was determined to give Shidehara the opportunity to halt the adverturism of the military. Consistent with the kind of advice he received from Lamont, Stimson sent gently worded notes to both the Chinese and Japanese governments asking them to end the hostilities. He carefully avoided any kind of threat that might stimulate Japanese chauvinism, play into the hands of military extremists, and undermine Shidehara and other "moderates." Shidehara sent the assurances for which Stimson hoped: Japanese troops would be recalled to the railroad zone as soon as possible. Stimson waited watchfully, hopefully.

But Shidehara had lost control, and the Japanese army continued its advance through Manchuria. With the bombing of Chinchow in early October it was clear that the army was ignoring the government in Tokyo and intended to drive Chinese forces out of Manchuria. What could the United States do? Chiang demanded that the Americans invoke the Kellogg-Briand Pact. Stimson, however, had tried that in 1929 during a Chinese-Soviet crisis and, to his embarrassment, had found the moral force of the pact of minimal value. He was not eager to jump out in front again. He and Hoover preferred to see the League of Nations take the lead and to that end were willing to allow the American consul general in Geneva to sit with the League Council. In mid-October the United States joined the League in reminding both Chinese and Japanese of their pledges when they signed the Kellogg-Briand Pact, but to no effect.

In China there was despair. Efforts to invoke the League Covenant, the Kellogg Pact, and America's sense of its role as China's champion had failed to generate sufficient external pressure on Japan. Chiang's preference for eliminating his domestic enemies before confronting Japan angered Chinese patriots. He was forced to resign as president, although he retained control of both the military and the party apparatus.

In Washington, Hoover's cabinet was forced to focus on the issue, to put the economic crisis aside for the moment and determine how the United States would respond if the Japanese army continued to defy Shidehara and seized all of Manchuria. Stimson, Hoover, and their principal advisers understood the importance of Manchuria to Japan and could empathize with Japanese irritation over Chinese challenges. Hoover's years in China, ended by the Boxer Rebellion, left him with little sympathy for that nation's plight. On the other hand, he admired Japan's process of modernization, the evidence of a progressive, efficient people. Nonetheless, Hoover considered the actions of the Japanese army to be outrageous and immoral. The Japanese had violated their pledges under the Nine-Power Treaty of 1922 and the Kellogg Pact of 1928. On the other hand, no one in the cabinet argued that important American interests were threatened in Manchuria. Moreover, the secretary of war declared that the military was not strong enough to confront Japan.

In a similar context in 1910, Theodore Roosevelt had urged President William Howard Taft not to antagonize the Japanese. Roosevelt warned that Japanese interests in Manchuria were vital and that American interests there were not. Lacking adequate military power or the public support necessary to use force in so remote a region of the world, it would be best to drop the issue. Taft's secretary of state, Philander Knox, had been repelled by Roosevelt's argument. The territory in question was Chinese and the United States would not acquiesce in Japanese imperialism. He would seek an alternative between war and surrender. In fact, Knox never found a feasible alternative. In 1931, Japanese aggression was more blatant and appeasement seemed even less attractive to Stimson than it had to Knox. But what could be done?

The strongest pressure on the Hoover administration to act against Japan came from the American peace movement. Although the movement remained divided over the relative importance of disarmament, outlawing of war, and membership in the League as the means toward a shared goal, all activists perceived the threat Japan posed to the system so laboriously constructed after the world war. If Japan could violate its commitments to the peace system with impunity, the system would collapse. Leaders of the peace movement, especially Dorothy Detzer of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, demanded that the United States act to stop Japan.

Stimson shared the vision of some of the leaders of the peace movement, and he perceived America's postwar role as the world's greatest power. Much like Woodrow Wilson, he had a profound sense of the need of the United States to maintain a new world order in which there would be no place for aggression. Japan had to be stopped, the peace system, the new world order, had to be preserved—but how? Hoover was adamant against the use of force. Neither Detzer nor most of the other peace organization leaders contemplated force. Stimson himself never advocated using force. And the military left no doubt that the means were not available had anyone wanted to use force to stop Japan. In October 1931, Hoover and Stimson were agreed that the United States could cooperate with the League in a campaign of moral suasion, while avoiding any League effort to defer leadership to Washington. Detzer remained suspicious that the United States had sold out to Japan, but most leaders of the peace movement were heartened by the cooperation between Washington and Geneva.

As Western leaders groped for some way short of force to stop the Japanese army, Stimson considered economic sanctions, uncertain whether they were warranted or would be effective, or of the risks such action might entail. Hoover argued that economic sanctions led inevitably to war and was unwilling to use them. Then, amid despair over American impotence, the Japanese government called for a commission of inquiry and the League Council agreed to send what came to be known as the Lytton Commission. Stimson praised the League, pledged the support of the United States, and resumed his hope that Shidehara would prevail.

On December 11, 1931, the cabinet in which Shidehara was foreign minister resigned, ending forever the era of Shidehara diplomacy. The new Japanese government quickly approved army plans to seize all of Manchuria—and the nearby province of Jehol in Inner Mongolia. By the end of the first week of January, 1932, Japanese troops controlled all of Manchuria, had entered the strategic city of Shanhaikuan at the Great Wall, and were poised to move into North China. The time for wishful thinking had passed.

One idea that had emerged in discussions between Stimson and Hoover was for the United States to issue a statement refusing to recognize the fruits of Japanese aggression. In various forms the idea had occurred to several people, in and out of the administration, but it did not seem a very promising approach and it lay in abeyance until January 7, 1932. In desperation, Stimson returned to "nonrecognition." He sent identical notes to the governments of China and Japan declaring the refusal of the United States to admit the legality of the situation in Manchuria and its unwillingness to accept any arrangements there affecting its treaty rights or those of its citizens, including those relating to the sovereignty, independence, and territorial and administrative integrity of China; nor would the United States recognize any situation brought about in violation of the Kellogg Pact. The Stimson (or Hoover-Stimson) Doctrine, as the notes were ultimately labeled, provided American leaders with a palliative for the discomfort caused by their inability and unwillingness to take more aggressive and conceivably more effective action against Japan.

Three weeks later, the Japanese navy attacked Shanghai. Japanese Marines landed in the city and advanced against Chinese military positions. Ships in the harbor unloaded salvo after salvo, rarely discriminating between soldier and civilian. Wave after wave of Japanese planes pounded residential districts. And, unlike their comrades in Manchuria, Chinese troops ignored their government's orders to retreat; they resisted stubbornly and prolonged the hostilities.

The bloodshed in Shanghai, the attacks on civilians, and the proximity of a large foreign population and foreign property aroused public attention in the West to a degree that the attack on Mukden had not. In Europe especially and among foreigners in China, there had been considerable sympathy for the Japanese position in Manchuria. Chiang's regime, with its stridently nationalistic demands, had won few friends in the international settlement. Outside of missionary circles, most foreigners in China, and most diplomats who dealt with China, were prepared to accept Japanese claims of provocation and of special interests. Far fewer could condone the attack on Shanghai.

American awareness of events in Shanghai appears to have been much greater than the minimal attention the crisis in Manchuria had wrenched from a Depression-wracked public. Shanghai contained more American residents than any other Chinese city. Suddenly there was a direct danger to American lives and property. Japan had to be stopped. Even Lamont, who blamed China for the Manchurian crisis, who had found ways to assist the Japanese financially, and who opposed Stimson's efforts to increase pressure on Japan, changed course and came to Stimson's aid.

Within the American peace movement, a demand for economic sanctions boiled. A. Lawrence Lowell, president of Harvard, attempted to organize a nationwide boycott of Japanese goods, and sympathetic women refused to wear stockings made of Japanese silk (when cotton stockings proved unattractive, the nylon stocking was born). Leaders of the peace movement were as uncertain as Hoover and Stimson about the effectiveness of such actions, but were driven by a greater sense of urgency than the president. Their fears for the survival of the peace system intensified. Moreover, they perceived that failure to develop an effective nonviolent means of stopping Japan would be viewed as impotence and result in a loss of influence to organizations like the Navy League, to advocates of military preparedness, of superior American military force as the only means of stopping Japan. Economic sanctions might be the answer.

Hoover remained adamantly opposed. Lamont sent protests to his Japanese friends through his private channels, and Stimson protested officially. The secretary of state was fast losing faith in the efficacy of world public opinion. He argued for increasing the American fleet in Shanghai's harbor. He asked the president to send marines to Shanghai, both to protect Americans there and to signal Japan that the United States was not prepared to surrender its pretensions to power in East Asia. The American admirals were uneasy, fearful of a Japanese attack for which the U.S. Navy in the western Pacific was not adequately prepared. Indirectly, Nelson T. Johnson, the American minister to China, provided strong support for Stimson's position. Johnson warned that the absence of American support for Chinese resistance to Japanese aggression might result in an indiscriminate, Boxer-like rage against foreigners. Hoover accepted Stimson's recommendation, and naval and marine units moved to Shanghai.

The Japanese military was not intimidated by American gestures or moved by American protests. Lamont's friends among Japanese leaders were isolated and then assassinated as the military and civilian extremists ripped the reins of power from their hands. Japan in 1932 was in the hands of men very different from those with whom the West had cooperated in the 1920s. In the United States the peace movement slowly became demoralized by its inability to find an adequate response to Japanese militarism and its apprehension that anti-Japanese sentiment might lead to war. Stimson struggled on, groping for a way to live with his conscience, for a way to avoid appeasing Japan, for a way to save the new world order and the peace system upon which it was founded.

In February 1932 Stimson tried a new tack, a protest against Japan's actions as a violation of the Nine-Power Treaty of 1922. Despairing of European support for his maneuver, recognizing the inadvisability of a unilateral protest, he wrote an open letter to Senator William Borah, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. In it, he called attention to the obligations Japan, like Great Britain and the United States, had accepted when signing the several treaties resulting from the Washington Conference of 1921-1922 and to the long-standing agreement among the countries concerned to preserve the territorial integrity of China. He expressed the hope that all nations would withhold recognition of arrangements resulting from violations of these agreements—and of the Kellogg Pact. Pointedly, Stimson noted that violations of treaty provisions respecting Chinese territory freed the United States from restrictions on the size of its fleet and from its pledge not to fortify its possessions in the Pacific.

The support for which Stimson hoped from Great Britain and other League Council members was never obtained. European capitals were also filled with men unwilling to bell the cat. Apart from those who sympathized with Japanese anger at evidences of Chinese nationalism, most European leaders were mindful of the superior power Japan could bring to bear in East Asia. Moreover, the Japanese had left no doubt of their willingness to use that power in pursuit of interests virtually all Japanese, including the "moderates" to whom Lamont looked, deemed vital. No European leader saw the interests of his people in China worth the price that might have to be paid to challenge Japan. In general a realism similar to that proferred by Roosevelt in 1910 prevailed in Europe. Nonetheless, in March the League Council did endorse the nonrecognition policy Stimson and Hoover advocated—too late to stop Japan from creating the puppet state of Manchukuo. The Lytton Commission began its investigation of the Mukden Incident in May 1932, but its work was futile.

The Japanese did finally terminate hostilities in Shanghai in May 1932, less under duress from the West than because Japanese military leaders never intended more than to bloody the Chinese for daring to harass Japanese interests in the city. Unexpected Chinese resistance engaged the honor of the Japanese military and prolonged what might otherwise have been a brief punitive expedition, reminding the Diet in Tokyo, when it was time for appropriations, that the navy also protected the glory of the empire. Had the Japanese had more aggressive intentions toward Shanghai, their responses to complaints about their activities in Manchuria suggest that they would not have allowed Stimson's threats or the tepid League action to deter them.

Stimson's efforts were further undermined by Hoover. The president, by May 1932, was acting with one eye toward the November election. He was in serious trouble with the American people because of the Depression, the failure of his programs for recovery, and his apparent insensitivity to the widespread suffering in the world's wealthiest country. Foreign policy seemed most likely to provide him with the triumph that would salvage his career. His reputation as a statesman remained intact, and he may well have had visions of winning a Nobel Prize when he offered additional reductions in American naval power as a catalyst to the success of the world arms limitation conference meeting in Geneva. Whatever the value of eviscerating the U.S. Navy, such an offer was not likely to throw fear into the hearts of the Japanese militarists. Lest they doubt his peaceful intentions, Hoover authorized the undersecretary of state, William J. Castle, who was notoriously pro-Japanese, to deliver a speech assuring the American people and the Japanese that the United States would back the Hoover-Stimson Doctrine with nothing more than the moral force of public opinion. All Stimson could do was complain to his diary of the tribulations of conducting foreign affairs while working for a pacifist president.

Although the report of the Lytton Commission and Japan's departure from the League were still months away, the crisis in East Asia ended with the Japanese withdrawal from Shanghai. Having established control over Manchuria, most Japanese, military and civilian, were satisfied, even exhilarated. The empire seemed secure, and Japan had stood up to the Western nations, especially America, which persistently denied Japan's demand for equality. A few ideologues, a few publicists, pressed for further expansion, for Japanese hegemony in East Asia, for what was to become Japan's New Order. But these were minor currents in 1932. The military's principal concern was control of Japan, to which end army extremists proceeded to murder and intimidate opposition leaders and to silence its few critics, including those in the military. Japan was lurching toward totalitarianism.

Most Western leaders returned to domestic issues the economic problems that wracked their nations. Happy to let sleeping dogs lie, some comforted themselves with the notion that the Japanese would eventually recognize the error of their ways. Almost alone, Stimson still brooded. He realized he had angered most Japanese leaders, even those most friendly to the United States. From all sides he was warned against antagonizing them further. But what would happen in a world in which treaty violations went unpunished, in which aggressors feared no reprisals? What were the alternatives to war and appeasement? Was not war with Japan inevitable if the Japanese military went unpunished? And so, within the limits imposed by Hoover, Stimson continued to indict the Japanese for destroying the peace system, for destroying the hopes of men and women of goodwill throughout the world.

Stimson was sometimes plagued by the idea that China's development toward American-style democracy depended upon evidence of the willingness of the United States to come to its aid, to play the role of China's champion. Certainly Chiang Kai-shek and his brother-in-law, Minister of Finance H. H. Kung, envisioned a Japanese-American war that would rescue China. But all Stimson's protests and indictments, however much they irritated the Japanese and worried Hoover and Lamont, did little for China. Some leftist intellectuals professed to see nothing less than Japanese-American collusion, aimed ultimately against the Soviet Union. Closer to the mark were the thoughts of the editor of the Ta Kung Pao, China's leading independent newspaper. On behalf of the Chinese people, he thanked Stimson for his efforts—"but they are only words, words, words, and they amount to nothing at all if there is no force to back them." ₁ And he realized there would be no force, because the United States and the League had left no doubt that the ideals they espoused would not be backed by force.

Stimson's concerns during the Manchurian crisis clearly had overtones similar to those running through the mind of Philander Knox in 1910: The United States had a special relationship with China, involving an obligation to support Chinese aspirations to be free of imperialist intrusions on its sovereignty. But in addition to that powerful myth, Stimson was confronting the crisis as foreign minister of the world's leading power and groping for a policy appropriate to that role. The enormous increase in America's involvement in world affairs in the 1920s required Stimson and his colleagues to consider their nation's responsibilities. The United States had joined in the creation of a new world order based not only on the League Covenant, but also on the Washington treaties and the Kellogg-Briand Pact. Could Japan be allowed to destroy that order, violate treaty obligations, resort to force and aggression as its military leaders pleased? Stimson wanted to answer that question in the negative, but the restraints on him were consistent with the constraints faced by all American leaders in the postwar world. American responsibility for the new world order did not extend to the use of force: The American commitment to the new order did not extend to risking war.

In East Asia in 1932, the American approach failed. The peace system collapsed. The new world order began to crumble. And China lost Manchuria.

While the Japanese settled into Manchuria, two lesser crises in Latin America also stimulated efforts by Stimson on behalf of the new, peaceful world order. Both involved border disputes, one between Bolivia and Paraguay and the other between Peru and Colombia. In both instances one of the parties to the dispute used force to attempt to resolve the issue. In an earlier era, the United States would probably not have been much concerned, so long as no European power was involved. In 1932, after trumpeting the importance of peaceful solutions to international disputes and opposing recognition of territorial claims settled by force in East Asia, Stimson assumed an obligation to address analogous problems in the Western Hemisphere.

In June Bolivian forces overran a Paraguayan post in the Chaco, a beautifully exotic jungle, possession of which would give Bolivia access to the sea—and the possibility of oil. Fighting intensified in the weeks that followed, and Stimson heard the call. There was no danger in the Chaco war of the United States being used by the League, as neither participant belonged to the League. Nor, for that matter, had either signed the Kellogg-Briand Pact. Nonetheless, the principles to which Stimson adhered and of which he had been attempting to persuade the Japanese were at stake. Working through the Union of American Republics, Stimson won a joint nineteen-nation appeal for an end to the fighting—an appeal which concluded with a paraphrase of the Hoover-Stimson Doctrine of nonrecognition. Unfortunately, not even an appeal to principles of the Kellogg Pact, to the renunciation of the use of force to settle controversies, calmed the aggressive instincts of the combatants. The war dragged on, intensified, and did not end until 1935, with all of the Chaco going to Paraguay.

Columbia and Peru had signed the Kellogg Pact, however, and Colombia invoked its provisions a few months after Peru seized the Amazon village of Leticia in September 1932. The Colombian government's reference to the Kellogg Pact came, coincidentally," with the convening by Stimson of a conference of ambassadors of the Great Powers, which met the day after. Stimson told the ambassadors of his intention to remind Colombia and Peru of their solemn obligation and asked that their governments follow suit. All governments but that of Japan did so, after a fashion. A year and a half later, the League settled the conflict and Colombia regained Leticia.

If Stimson's efforts to preserve the peace system in Latin America were hardly more successful than his efforts in East Asia, the administration did achieve more satisfying results when it could act unilaterally. Hoover was determined to continue the retreat from imperialism in Central America that had begun early in the 1 920s. The experience in Nicaragua had enlightened Stimson as to the dangers of interventionism. There were no differences between the president and his secretary of state on this issue.

Hoover did not wait for his inauguration, but instead left shortly after his election on a ten-week, ten-country tour of Latin America. The central theme of his addresses was the intention of the United States to demonstrate that it would be a good—e.g., noninterventionist—neighbor. In 1930 he had the government publish the Clark Memorandum, which denied that the Monroe Doctrine justified intervention, as declared by Roosevelt in his corollary. Although a right to intervene might be claimed for other reasons, the United States would not again assume such a responsibility under the Monroe Doctrine. Similarly, Hoover changed American policy toward recognition, backing away from Wilson's intensely ideological, antirevolutionary criteria. A de facto regime that promised to meet its international obligations and eventually hold elections would be recognized.

Ending the protectorates could also be accomplished largely as an act of will in Washington. Stimson and Hoover were determined to get the U.S. Marines out of Nicaragua, but it took them almost four years. In January 1933, for only the second time in twenty years, there were no American troops in the land of Somoza and Sandino. A similar effort to withdraw from Haiti was thwarted briefly by the Haitian legislature, but occurred shortly after Hoover left office on terms virtually identical to those he and Stimson had stipulated. Perhaps the most ambiguous evidence of American virtue was the persistent refusal to heed the call to intervene in Cuba to depose a vicious dictator, Gerado Machado y Morales, despite the right of intervention granted to the United States by the Cuban Constitution and the 1903 treaty between the two countries. The requisite unrest existed in growing opposition to Machado, but Stimson could stomach no more. He and his advisers chose to perceive no threat to American interests. Intervention would be "intermeddling imperialism of the most flagrant sort." ₂ Machado survived to become Franklin Roosevelt's problem.

As Hoover and Stimson prepared to leave office, the United States remained the hegemon of the Caribbean, but the Big Stick advocated by Theodore Roosevelt and used righteously by Woodrow Wilson was no longer in evidence. The scourge of the hemisphere tried to conform to the principles its leaders espoused as they shared in the construction of the postwar peace system. It is worth noting that Hoover and Stimson neither ordered nor threatened intervention in Latin America, despite the fact that during their years in office Latin American governments defaulted on more than $1 million in American loans and confiscated millions of dollars' worth of American property. The empire would have to stand on its own: The marines were not coming.

For seven years, peace organizations all over the world had prepared for the World Disarmament Conference scheduled for February 1932. Delegations from fifty-nine countries appeared for the opening session—which had to be delayed for an hour while the League Council confronted the new crisis caused by Japan's attack on Shanghai. For years the peace movement had pointed toward this conference, the culmination of the postwar effort to bring perpetual peace. The Kellogg-Briand Pact had brought the dream a step closer: Nations committed to the renunciation of war as an instrument of national policy would have little reason to resist the call to reduce their armaments. Slowly the great naval powers had reached agreements, first at Washington in 1921 and 1922 and then at London in 1930. Now, in 1932, naval arms limitation could be extended to other classes of ships, armies could be reduced, land armaments restricted.

The will to peace in the Western democracies was too strong for cynical diplomats to resist. French leaders, still intensely fearful of a revitalized Germany, determined to provide for France's security by obstructing German rearmament and maintaining French military superiority on the continent. No visions of a Heavenly City on earth could shake the French position. France was represented at Geneva, but no more willing to disarm than it had been at any of the naval conferences. The French government had ascertained that it could not depend on American or British support, that it could rely only on its own arms for security. From France there could be little more than the repetition of standard formulas: Somehow the world would first provide for French security and then, only then, was France willing to give serious consideration to disarmament. Nonetheless, France and all those governments that expected little to come of the conference demonstrated their commitment to peace by showing up and hoping to demonstrate to the world that some other government was responsible for the impasse.

In June 1932, after all the familiar arguments and positions had been put forward, after a moderate German government demanding equality for Germany had fallen, Hoover heartened the peace movement with his dramatic proposal for a breakthrough, for the abolition of all offensive weapons and the reduction of remaining weapons by a third. The German, Italian, and Soviet governments responded enthusiastically. The British, French, and Japanese did not. A few weeks later the conference recessed for two months. A few days later, the National Socialist or Nazi party, led by an absurd demagogue named Adolf Hitler, won a plurality in the German elections.

In November Herbert Hoover's prayers for reelection went unanswered. In January 1933 Hitler became chancellor and quickly eliminated the remnants of Weimar democracy in Germany. In February Japan withdrew from the League of Nations. Desperate efforts to save the World Disarmament Conference, to retain the vision of the 1920s, were mounted in Geneva, one after another, by Europeans and Americans alike. But time had run out. The peace movement had failed. In the era of Adolf Hitler and Japanese militarism, a more apocalyptic vision would prevail.

VII

Hoover as president and diplomatist clearly deserved a better fate. He was an abler man than his two immediate predecessors, better informed about the world and its problems, better equipped to be at the helm as the United States expanded its empire and led the world. He was defeated by the Great Depression and Japanese militarism, neither of which he could have prevented.

The world economic crisis and its manifestations in America shadowed his every move. His responses to the Depression were generally but not always unhelpful. His refusal to veto the Smoot-Hawley tariff bill and his long opposition to war debt cancellation exacerbated already grievous situations. His moratorium on war debt and reparations payments came too late to be of much value. Responsibility for collapse of the world economic system cannot be placed on an individual or a single nation, but as the dominant financial power on the globe, the policies of the United States affected other nations enormously. Herbert Hoover, as much as any one man could, had shaped those policies.

Similarly, Japanese militarism long antedated Hoover's presidency—and the Great Depression. Even the specific plans for the Mukden crisis and the takeover of Manchuria had been available since 1927. But Hoover's commendable determination not to use force in support of policy, not to waste the taxpayers' money on military expenditures, sent the Japanese precisely the wrong message. His recognition of the crippling waste of so much of the military budget and his success at the London Conference in 1930 should not obscure the fact that he did not build the U.S. Navy up to treaty limits. The naval limitation treaties of 1922 and 1930 were not evidences of a new world in which navies were no longer needed; they were carefully devised compromises protecting the security and interests of the major naval powers. When one of them, the United States, did not build the ships it was allowed, the balance was destroyed. American interests could no longer be assured of protection, and a power such as Japan, which continued to build, could easily be tempted to adventurism, confident that no potential adversary could—or would—challenge it. Hoover's attitude toward military spending meant that he was the wrong man to lead the United States on a world stage that would have to be shared with Hitler and the Japanese generals.

Endnotes

Note 1: Quoted by Willys Peck, Consul General, Nanking, January 7, 1933, U.S. Department of State Decimal File 893.00/12284, National Archives. Back.

Note 2: Quoted in Bryce Wood, The Making of the Good Neighbor Policy (1961), 57. Back.