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> In a message dated 6/27/02 6:31:52 AM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
From: "chipberlet" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: Thu Jun 27, 2002
Subject: Re: Quigley, Sutton, and Conspiracy
>>>>I read it, and flagged many pages. It is an incredibly long and
>>>>boring book. I think the section that caught my attention most was
>>>>the pages from 938-956 where Quigley launches into a restatement and
>>>>slight revision of the McCarthyist claims that secret elites behind
>>>>London financial circles and Wall Street manipulate the left through
>>>>communist subversives and liberal foundations out to destroy pure
>>>>capitalism on behalf of the forces of finance capital and elitism.
>>>>Sound familiar? Sutton merely restates this thesis over and over in
>>>>his books. So does Lyndon LaRouche. So does W. Cleon Skousen in his
>>>>book "The Naked Capitalist." This is essentially a right-wing
>>>>populist narrative. I co-wrote a whole book on the subject: "Right-
>>>>Wing Populism in America."
>>>>-Chip
Hi, Mr. Berlet,
Since you seem unable to offer any comments on any factual inaccuracies in
Mr. Quigley's work, I thought I would post the section that you speak of.
Also since you slander Mr. Quigley with "McCarthyism" I thought I would also
include Mr. Quigley's commentaries on Senator McCarthy. And how come in the
only refutation of Mr. Quigley that you have made here includes many
"McCarthyist" smears of association and labeling, without providing anything
factual.
First the section that Mr. Berlet picked-out of Mr. Quigley's work. This is a
very interesting narrative, whereby Mr. Quigley tells how JP Morgan and
others proceeded to infiltrate and "run" the progressives and the left for
Morgan and friends own ends. It include the story of foundation support for
the elite's selected "stooges" to find out info, steer and stop the left if
it ever went "radical" and actually did something of substance.
Gee, wonder why, foundations supported Mr. Berlet, to the tune of $700,000 a
year (for an office of 5-7 people)?. And wants us all to dismiss Mr. Quigley
as a "conspiracist" and that Mr. Quigley writes a "long and boring book."
And if you can please read the section about McCarthy, so you may hear what
Mr. Quigley himself says about Sen. McCarthy.
And for Mr. Quigleys, obit and more . . .
http://www.tboyle.net/Catholicism/Carroll_Quigley.html So you may judge for
yourself if Mr. Quigley is a "conspiracist" as Mr. Berlet says and should be
dismissed out-of-hand.
PS. Many of the folks that Quigley speaks of are Skull and Bones and their
direct contacts.
an excerpt from:
Tragedy and Hope - A History of The World in Our Time
Carroll Quigley@1966
Angriff Press
Box 2726
Hollywood, CA 90078
ISBN 0913022-14-4
1348 pages
------
More than fifty years ago the Morgan firm decided to infiltrate the Left-wing
political movements in the United States. This was relatively easy to do,
since these groups were starved for funds and eager for a voice to reach the
people. Wall Street supplied both. The purpose was not to destroy, dominate,
or take over but was really threefold: (1) to keep informed about the
thinking of Left-wing or liberal groups, (2) to provide them with a
mouthpiece so that they could "blow off steam," and (3) to have a final veto
on their publicity and possibly on their actions, if they ever went
"radical." There was nothing really new about this decision, since other
financiers had talked about it and even attempted it earlier. What made it
decisively important this time was the combination of its adoption by the
dominant Wall Street financier, at a time when tax policy was driving all
financiers to seek tax-exempt refuges for their fortunes, and at a time when
the ultimate in Left-wing radicalism was about to appear under the banner of
the Third International.
The best example of this alliance of Wall Street and Left-wing publication
was The New Republic, a magazine founded by Willard Straight, using Payne
Whitney money, in 1914. Straight, who had been assistant to Sir Robert Hart
(Director of the Chinese Imperial Customs Service and the head of the
European imperialist penetration of China) and had remained in the Far East
from 190 1 to 19 12, became a Morgan partner and the firm's chief expert on
the Far East. He married Dorothy Payne Whitney whose names indicate the
family alliance of two of America's greatest fortunes. She was the daughter
of William C. Whitney, New York utility millionaire and the sister and
co-heiress of Oliver Payne, of the Standard Oil "trust." One of her brothers
married Gertrude Vanderbilt, while the other, Payne Whitney, married the
daughter of Secretary of State John Hay, who enunciated the American policy
of the "Open Door" in China. In the next generation, three first cousins,
John Hay ("Jock") Whitney, Cornelius Vanderbilt ("Sonny") Whitney, and
Michael Whitney ("Mike") Straight, were allied in numerous public policy
enterprises of a propagandist nature, and all three served in varied roles in
the late New Deal and Truman administrations. In these they were closely
allied with other "Wall Street liberals," such as Nelson Rockefeller.
The New Republic was founded by Willard and Dorothy Straight, using her
money, in 1914, and continued to be supported by her financial contributions
until March 23, 1953. The original purpose for establishing the paper was to
provide an outlet for the progressive Left and to guide it quietly in an
Anglophile direction. This latter task was entrusted to a young man, only
four years out of Harvard, but already a member of the mysterious Round Table
group, which has played a major role in directing England's foreign policy
since its formal establishment in 1909 This new recruit, Walter Lippmann, has
been, from 1914 to the present, the authentic spokesman in American
journalism for the Establishments on both sides of the Atlantic in
international affairs. His biweekly columns, which appear in hundreds of
American papers, are copyrighted by the New York Herald Tribune which is now
owned by J. H. Whitney. It was these connections, as a link between Wall
Street and the Round Table Group, which gave Lippmann the opportunity in
1918, while still in his twenties, to be the official interpreter of the
meaning of Woodrow Wilson's Fourteen Points to the British government.
Willard Straight, like many Morgan agents, was present at the Paris Peace
Conference but died there of pneumonia before it began. Six years later, in
1925, when his widow married a second time and became Lady Elmhirst of
Dartington Hall, she took her three small children from America to England,
where they were brought up as English. She herself renounced her American
citizenship in 1935. Shortly afterward her younger son, "Mike,"
unsuccessfully "stood" for Parliament on the Labour Party ticket for the
constituency of Cambridge University, an act which required, under the law,
that he be a British subject. This proved no obstacle, in 1938, when Mike,
age twenty-two, returned to the United States, after thirteen years in
England, and was at once appointed to the State Department as Adviser on
International Economic Affairs. In 1937, apparently in preparation for her
son's return to America, Lady Elmhirst, sole owner of The New Republic,
shifted this ownership to Westrim, Ltd., a dummy corporation created for the
purpose in Montreal, Canada, and set up in New York, with a grant of $1.5
million, the William C. Whitney Foundation of which Mike became president.
This helped finance the family's interest in modern art and dramatic theater,
including sister Beatrix's tours as a Shakespearean actress.
Mike Straight served in the Air Force in 1943-1945, but this did not in any
way hamper his career with The New Republic. He became Washington
correspondent in May 1941; editor in June 1943; and publisher in December
1946 (when fie made Henry Wallace editor). During these shifts he changed
completely the control of The New Republic, and its companion magazine Asia,
removing known liberals (such as Robert Morss Lovett, Malcolm Cowley, and
George Soule), centralizing the control, and taking it into his own hands.
This control by Whitney money had, of course, always existed, but it had been
in abeyance for the twenty-five years following Willard Straight's death.
The first editor of The New Republic, the well-known "liberal" Herbert Croly,
was always aware of the situation. After ten years in the job, he explained
the relationship in the "official" biography of Willard Straight which he
wrote for a payment of $25,000. "Of course they [the Straights] could always
withdraw their financial support if they ceased to approve of the policy of
the paper; and, in that event, it would go out of existence as a consequence
of their disapproval." Croly's biography of Straight, published in 1924,
makes perfectly clear that Straight was in no sense a liberal or a
progressive, but was, indeed, a typical international banker and that The New
Republic was simply a medium for advancing certain designs of such
international bankers, notably to blunt the isolationism and anti-British
sentiments so prevalent among many America Progressives, while providing them
with a vehicle for expression of their progressive views in literature, art,
music, social reform, and even domestic politics. In 1916, when the editorial
board wanted to support Wilson for a second term in the Presidency, Willard
Straight took two pages of the magazine to express his own support for
Hughes. The chief achievement of The New Republic, however, in 1914-1918 and
again in 1938-1948, was for interventionism in Europe and support of Great
Britain.
The role of "Mike" Straight in this situation in 1938-1948 is clear.
He took charge of this family fief, abolished the editorial board, and
carried on his father's aims, in close cooperation with labor and Leftwing
groups in American politics. In these efforts he was in close contact with
his inherited Wall Street connections, especially his Whitney cousins and
certain family agents like Bruce Bliven, Milton C. Rose, and Richard J.
Walsh. They handled a variety of enterprises, including publications,
corporations, and foundations, which operated out of the law office of
Baldwin, Todd, and Lefferts of 120 Broadway, New York City. In this nexus
were The New Republic, Asia, Theatre Arts , the Museum of Modern Art, and
others, all supported by a handful of foun
dations, including the William C. Whitney Foundation, the Gertrude Vanderbilt
Whitney Foundation, the J. H. Whitney Foundation, and others. An interesting
addition was made to these enterprises in 1947 when Straight founded a new
magazine, the United Nations World, to be devoted to the support of the UN.
Its owners of record were The New Republic itself (under its corporate name),
Nelson Rockefeller, J. H. Whitney, Max Ascoli (an anti-Fascist Italian who
had married American wealth and used it to support a magazine of his own, The
Reporter), and Beatrice S. Dolivet. The last lady, Mike Straight's sister,
made her husband, Louis Dolivet, "International Editor" of the new magazine.
An important element in this nexus was Asia magazine, which had been
established by Morgan's associates as the journal of the American Asiatic
Society in 1898, had been closely associated with Willard Straight during his
lifetime, and was owned outright by him from January 1917. In the 1930's it
was operated for the Whitneys by Richard J. Walsh and his wife, known to the
world as Pearl Buck. Walsh, who acted as editor of Asia, was also president
of the holding corporation of The New Republic for several years and
president of the John Day publishing company. In 1942, after Nelson
Rockefeller and Jock Whitney joined the government to take charge of American
propaganda in Latin America in the Office of the Coordinator of
Inter-American Affairs, Asia magazine changed its name to Asia and the
Americas. In 1947, when Mike Straight began a drive to "sell" the United
Nations, it was completely reorganized into United Nations World.
Mike Straight was deeply anti-Communist, but he frequently was found
associated with them, sometimes as a collaborator, frequently as an opponent.
The opposition was seen most clearly in his efforts as one of the founders of
the American Veterans Committee (AVC) and its political sequel, the Americans
for Democratic Action (ADA). The collaboration may be seen in Straight's
fundamental role in Henry Wallace's third-party campaign for the Presidency
in 1948.
The relationship between Straight and the Communists in pushing Wallace into
his 1948 adventure may be misjudged very easily. The anti-Communist Right had
a very simple explanation of it: Wallace and Straight were Communists and
hoped to elect Wallace President. Nothing could be further from the truth.
All three-Straight, Wallace, and the Communists, joined in the attempt merely
as a means of defeating Truman. Straight was the chief force in getting the
campaign started in 1947 and was largely instrumental in bringing some of the
Communists into it, but when he had them all aboard the Wallace train, he
jumped off himself, leaving both Wallace and the Communists gliding swiftly,
without guidance or hope, on the downhill track to oblivion. It was a
brilliantly done piece of work.
The Communists wanted a third party in 1948 because it seemed the only way to
beat Truman and destroy the Marshall Plan. They hated the President for the
"Truman Doctrine" and his general opposition to the Soviet Union, but, above
all, because he had prevented the postwar economic collapse and the American
relapse into isolationism, both of which the Communists had not only expected
but critically needed. It was obvious to everyone that a two-party campaign
in 1948 would give the vote of the Right to the Republicans and the vote of
the Left to the Democrats, with the victory decided by where the division
came in the Center. In such a situation neither Straight nor the Communists
could influence the outcome in any way. But a third party on the Left, by
taking labor and other Left-wing votes from Truman, could reduce the
Democratic totals in the major states enough to throw those states and the
election to the Republicans. Why Straight wanted to do this in tile critical
months from September 1946 to April 1948 is unknown, but he clearly changed
his mind in the spring of 1948, abandoning poor, naive Henry Wallace to the
Communists at that time. A possible explanation of these actions will be
given later.
What is clear is that Mike Straight had a great deal to do with Wallace in
the autumn of 1946 when the former Vice-President broke with Truman and was
fired from the Cabinet. The break came over a Wallace speech, very critical
of American policy toward Russia, given before a wildly biased pro-Soviet
audience in Madison Square Garden on September 12, 1946. At the time Truman
told reporters he had approved the speech before delivery (a version which
Wallace still upholds), but, within a few days, Secretary of State Byrnes
forced the President to make a choice between him or Wallace, and the latter
was dismissed from the Cabinet.
Out of the government, without a platform from which to address the public,
Wallace's political future looked dim in the early autumn of 1946. Straight
provided the platform, by giving him his own editorial chair at The New
Republic (announced October 12, 1946). For the next fifteen months the
Wallace campaign was a Straight campaign. Tile latter supplied speechwriters,
research assistants, editorial writers, office space, money, and The New
Republic itself. Technically Wallace was editor, but the magazine staff and
expenditures steadily increased in directions which had little to do with the
magazine and everything to do with Wallace's presidential campaign, although
this effort was not announced to the public until a year later, in December
1947.
In the meantime, from the spring of 1947 onward, the Communists came in. It
would not be strictly true to say that Straight "brought them in," but I
believe it is fair to say that lie "let them in." For example, one of the
first to arrive was Lew Frank, Jr., brought in by Straight, who later
insisted that he did not realize that Frank was a Communist. As a matter of
fact, there was no evidence that Frank was a member of the Communist Party,
but Straight knew exactly where Frank stood politically since they had
engaged, on opposite sides, in a bitter struggle between Communists and
anti-Communists for control of AVC. In this, Frank had been a member of the
Communist caucus within AVC's national planning committee (as Straight told
David A. Shannon in 1956), and followed every twist of the party line in this
whole period. This party line became the pattern for Wallace's formal
speeches, since Frank was his most important speechwriter over a period of
eighteen months from early 1947 to October 1948.- More than this, Frank
accompanied Wallace on his endless travels during this period. In the autumn
of 1947 these three, Wallace, Frank, and Straight, made a trip to the
Mediterranean and were given an audience together by the Pope on November 4,
1947. On his return from this journey, Wallace was a changed man; his mind
was made up, to run against Truman on a third-party ticket. The announcement
was made public in The New Republic in December.
Straight continued to work for Wallace for President, and The New Republic
remained the center of the movement for almost four more months, but
something had changed. While he was still working for Wallace as President
and allowing the Communists into the project, he was simultaneously doing two
other things: working openly, and desperately, to prevent the new third party
from campaigning on any level other than the presidential, by blocking
everywhere he could Communist efforts to run third-party candidates for state
or congressional offices in competition with the Democrats; much less
publicly, he worked with his anti-Communist friends in labor, veteran, and
liberal groups to prevent endorsement of the Wallace candidacy. As a
consequence, the Communists were destroyed and eventually driven out of such
organizations, notably from the CIO-PAC (the great political alignment of
labor and progressive groups). As David Shannon wrote in The Decline of
American Communism (1959), "The Communists' support of Wallace shattered the
'left-center' coalition in the CIO; for the Communist unions, the Wallace
movement was the beginning of the end. The coalition began to dissolve almost
immediately after Wallace's announcement." What this means is that Wallace's
campaign to defeat Truman destroyed completely the remaining vestiges of the
Popular Front movement of the 1930's, drove the Communists out of the unions
and all progressive political groups, and drove the Communist unions out of
the labor movement of the country. This ended Communism as a significant
political force in the United States, and the end was reached by December
1948, long before McCarthy or J. Edgar Hoover or HUAC did their work. The men
who achieved this feat were Wallace and Straight, although it is still not
completely clear if they recognized what they were doing.
During the winter of 1947-1948, Lew Frank recognized that he was incapable of
handling the complex issues raised in Wallace's many speeches. Accordingly,
he joined a "Communist research group" which met in the Manhattan home of the
wealthy "Wall Street Red," Frederick Vanderbilt Field. The chief members of
this group, probably all Communists, were Victor Perlo and David Ramsay. This
pair drew up for Wallace an attack on the Marshall Plan and an alternative
Communist plan for European reconstruction, which was published in The New
Republic on January 12, 1948, was presented by Wallace to the Marshall Plan
"Hearings" of the House Foreign Affairs Committee on February 24th, but was
subsequently repudiated by Straight. In the three months following the Perlo
article, Straight was busy sawing off the limb on which Wallace now sat with
the Communists. He discharged from The New Republic payroll all those who
were working for the campaign rather than for the magazine, and the office on
East Forty-ninth Street once again settled down to publishing a "liberal"
weekly. In protest at this reversal, his managing editor, Edd Johnson,
resigned.
If Mike Straight planned to do what he did do to the Communists in 1946-1948,
that is, to get them out of progressive movements and unions, he pulled off
the most skillful political coup in twentieth century American politics. It
is not clear that he did plan it or intend it. But as a very able and
informed man, he must have had some motivation when he began, in 1947, the
effort which he knew might defeat Truman in 1948. While the evidence is not
conclusive, there are hints that another, more personal, motive might have
been involved, at least partly, in building up the Wallace threat to Truman's
political future. It concerns the Whitney family interest in overseas
airlines.
The Whitney family were deeply involved in airlines. Sonny Whitney was a
founder of Pan-American Airlines and chairman of its board Of directors from
its establishment in 1928 until he went to military service in 1941. Mike's
brother, Air Commodore Whitney Willard Straight, C.B.E., was even more deeply
involved on the British side. Big brother Whitney (born in 1912) had been in
civil aviation in England from the age of twenty-two, and by 1946-1949, was
not only a director of the Midland Bank, one of the world's greatest
financial institutions, but was also a director of Rolls-Royce and of BOAC,
as well as chairman of the board of directors of BEA (British European
Airways). In the years following the end of the war, a violent struggle was
going on, within aviation circles and the United States government, over the
future of American transocean air services. Before the war, these had been a
monopoly of Pan-Am; now, at the end of the war, the struggle was over how the
CAB would divide up this monopoly and what disposition would be made of the
enormous air-force investment in overseas bases. Apparently the White House
was not cooperative in these matters at first, but late in 1947 C. V. Whitney
was made, by presidential interim appointment, Assistant Secretary of the new
Department of the Air Force and, eighteen months later, after Truman's
inauguration, was made Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Aeronautics. This
was the most important post concerned with civil aviation in any Federal
department. The connection, if any, between these appointments and Mike
Straight's original support and later abandonment of Wallace has never been
revealed.
The associations between Wall Street and the Left, of which Mike Straight is
a fair example, are really survivals of the associations between the Morgan
Bank and the Left. To Morgan all political parties were simply organizations
to be used, and the firm always was careful to keep a foot in all camps.
Morgan himself, Dwight Morrow, and other partners were allied with
Republicans; Russell C. Leffingwell was allied with the Democrats; Grayson
Murphy was allied with the extreme Right; and Thomas W. Lamont was allied
with the Left. Like the Morgan interest in libraries, museums, and art, its
inability to distinguish between loyalty to the United States and loyalty to
England, its recognition of the need for social work among the poor, the
multipartisan political views of the Morgan firm in domestic politics went
back to the original founder of the firm, George Peabody (1795-1869). To this
same seminal figure may be attributed the use of tax-exempt foundations for
controlling these activities, as may be observed in many parts of America to
this day, in the use of Peabody foundations to support Peabody libraries and
museums. Unfortunately, we do not have space here for this great and untold
story, but it must be remembered that what we do say is part of a much larger
picture.
Our concern at the moment is with the links between Wall Street and the Left,
especially the Communists. Here the chief link was the Thomas W. Lamont
family. This family was in many ways parallel to the Straight family. Tom
Lamont had been brought into the Morgan firm, as Straight was several years
later, by Henry P. Davison, a Morgan partner from 1909. Lamont became a
partner in 1910, as Straight did in 1913. Each had a wife who became a
patroness of Leftish causes, and two sons, of which the elder was a
conventional banker, and the younger was a Left-wing sympathizer and sponsor.
In fact, all the evidence would indicate that Tom Lamont was simply Morgan's
apostle to the Left in succession to Straight a change made necessary by the
latter's premature death in 1918. Both were financial supporters of liberal
publications, in Lamont's case The Saturday Review of Literature, which he
supported throughout the 1920's and 1930's, and the New York Post, which he
owned from 1918 to 1924.
The chief evidence, however, can be found in the files of the HUAC which show
Tom Lamont, his wife Flora, and his son Corliss as sponsors and financial
angels to almost a score of extreme Left organizations, including the
Communist Party itself. Among these we need mention only two. One of these
was a Communist-front organization, the Trade Union Services, Incorporated,
of New York City, which in 1947 published fifteen trade-union papers for
various CIO unions. Among its officers were Corliss; Lamont and Frederick
Vanderbilt Field (another link between Wall Street and the Communists). The
latter was on the editorial boards of the official Communist newspaper in New
York, the Daily Worker, as well as its magazine, The New Masses, and was the
chief link between the Communists and the Institute of Pacific Relations in
1928-1947. Corliss Lamont was the leading light in another Communist
organization, which started life in the 1920's as the Friends of the Soviet
Union, but in 1943 was reorganized, with Lamont as chairman of the board and
chief incorporator, as the National Council of American-Soviet Friendship.
During this whole period of over two decades, Corliss Lamont, with the full
support of his parents, was one of the chief figures in "fellow traveler"
circles and one of the chief spokesmen for the Soviet point of view both in
these organizations and also in connections which came to him either as son
of the most influential man in Wall Street or as professor of philosophy at
Columbia University. His relationship with his parents may be reflected in a
few events of this period.
In January 1946, Corliss Lamont was called before HUAC to give testimony on
the National Council of American-Soviet Friendship. He refused to produce
records, was subpoenaed, refused, was charged with contempt of Congress, and
was so cited by the House of Representatives on June 26, 1946. In the midst
of this controversy, in May, Corliss; Lamont and his mother, Mrs. Thomas
Lamont, presented their valuable collection of the works of Spinoza to
Columbia University. The adverse publicity continued, yet when Thomas Lamont
rewrote his will, on January 6, 1948, Corliss Lamont remained in it as
co-heir to his father's fortune of scores of millions of dollars.
In 1951 the Subcommittee on Internal Security of the Senate Judiciary
Committee, the so-called McCarran Committee, sought to show that China had
been lost to the Communists by the deliberate actions of a group of academic
experts on the Far East and Communist fellow travelers whose work in that
direction was controlled and coordinated by the Institute of Pacific
Relations (IPR). The influence of the Communists in IPR is well established,
but the patronage of Wall Street is less well known.
The IPR was a private association of ten independent national councils in ten
countries concerned with affairs in the Pacific. The headquarters of the IPR
and of the American Council of IPR were both in New York and were closely
associated on an interlocking basis. Each spent about $2.5 million dollars
over the quarter-century from 1925 to 1950, of which about half, in each
case, came from the Carnegie Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation (which
were themselves interlocking groups controlled by an alliance of Morgan and
Rockefeller interests in Wall Street). Much of the rest, especially of the
American Council, came from firms closely allied to these two Wall Street
interests, such as Standard Oil, International Telephone and Telegraph,
International General Electric, the National City Bank, and the Chase
National Bank. In each case, about 10 percent of income came from sales of
publications and, of course, a certain amount came from ordinary members who
paid $15 a year and received the periodicals of the IPR and its American
Council, Pacific Affairs and Far Eastern Survey.
The financial deficits which occurred each year were picked up by financial
angels, almost all with close Wall Street connections. The chief identifiable
contributions here were about $60,000 from Frederick Vanderbilt Field over
eighteen years, $14,700 from Thomas Lamont over fourteen years, $800 from
Corliss Lamont (only after 1947), and $18,000 from a member of Lee, Higginson
in Boston who seems to have been Jerome D. Greene. In addition, large sums of
money each year were directed to private individuals for research and travel
expenses from similar sources, chiefly the great financial foundations.
Most of these awards for work in the Far Eastern area required approval or
recommendation from members of IPR. Moreover, access to publication and
recommendations to academic positions in the handful of great American
universities concerned with the Far East required similar sponsorship. And,
finally, there can be little doubt that consultant jobs on Far Eastern
matters in the State Department or other government agencies were largely
restricted to IPR-approved people. The individuals who published, who had
money, found jobs, were consulted, and who were appointed intermittently to
government missions were those who were tolerant of the IPR line. The fact
that all these lines of communication passed through the Ivy League
universities or their scattered equivalents west of the Appalachians, such as
Chicago, Stanford, or California, unquestionably went back to Morgan's
influence in handling large academic endowments.
There can be little doubt that the more active academic members of IPR, the
professors and publicists who became members of its governing board (such as
Owen Lattimore, Joseph P. Chamberlain, and Philip C. Jessup of Columbia,
William W. Lockwood of Princeton, John K. Fairbank of Harvard, and others)
and the administrative staff (which became, in time, the most significant
influence in its policies) developed an IPR party line. It is, furthermore,
fairly clear that this IPR line had many points in common both with the
Kremlin's party line on the Far East and with the State Department's policy
line in the same area. The interrelations among these, or the influence of
one on another, is highly disputed. Certainly no final conclusions can be
drawn. Clearly there were some Communists, even party members, involved (such
as Frederick Vanderbilt Field), but it is much less clear that there was any
disloyalty to the United States. Furthermore, there was a great deal of
intrigue both to help those who agreed with the IPR line and to influence
United States government policy in this direction, but there is no evidence
of which I am aware of any explicit plot or conspiracy to direct American
policy in a direction favorable either to the Soviet Union or to
international Communism. Efforts of the radical Right to support their
convictions about these last points undoubtedly did great, lasting, and
unfair damage to the reputations and interests of many people.
The true explanation of what happened is not yet completely known and, as far
as it is known, is too complicated to elucidate here. It is, however, clear
that many persons who were born in the period 1900-1920 and came to maturity
in the period 1928-1940 were so influenced by their experiences of war,
depression, and insecurity that they adopted, more or less unconsciously,
certain aspects of the Communist ideology (such as the economic
interpretation of history, the role of a dualistic class struggle in human
events, or the exploitative interpretation of the role of capital in the
productive system and of the possessing groups in any society). Many of these
ideas were nonsense, even in terms of their own experiences, but they were
facile interpretative guides for people who, whatever their expert knowledge
of their special areas, were lacking in total perspective on society as a
whole or human experience as a whole. Moreover, many of these people felt an
unconscious obligation to "help the underdog." This favorable attitude toward
the downtrodden and the oppressed was rooted in our Western Christian
heritage, especially in nineteenth-century humanitarianism, and in the older
Christian idea that all persons are redeemable and will prove trustworthy if
they are but trusted. This outlook was, for example, prevalent in that
ubiquitous intriguer, Lionel Curtis, who was the original guide and parent of
the IPR and of many similar organizations. As children of missionaries, many
of the organizers and members of the IPR obtained this spirit from their
family background along with their knowledge of the Far Eastern languages
which made them "experts."
It must be confessed that the IPR had many of the marks of a fellowtraveler
or Communist "captive" organization. But this does not, in any way, mean that
the radical Right or the professional ex-Communist version of these events is
accurate. For example, Elizabeth Bentley and, above all, Louis Budenz
testified before the McCarran Committee on the IPR. The latter identified
almost every person associated with the organization as a Communist or "under
Communist discipline" by his personal knowledge. In the most famous case,
that of Owen Lattimore, Budenz's emphatic testimony that Lattimore was a
Communist and that his orders were issued by small Communist Party conclaves
of Earl Browder, Budenz, F. V. Field, and others was totally refuted, not
only by the direct contradictory testimony of Browder and Field, but by
subsequent evidence from more reliable witnesses and from Budenz himself.
Questioning eventually made it clear that Budenz did not know Lattimore or
his work or any of his books (including one which he quoted as proof of
Lattimore's adherence to the party line). Moreover, Budenz gave direct
testimony that the 1944 mission to China of Vice-President Henry Wallace,
accompanied by Lattimore and John Carter Vincent (a State Department expert
on the Far East who has been accused of Communism), drew up recommendations
which were pro-Communist. This was shown to be the exact contrary of the
truth and a mere figment of Budenz's active imagination. Budenz testified
that the replacement of General Stilwell (who was anti-Chiang and relatively
favorable to Mao) by General Wedemeyer was the consequence of the influence
of Lattimore and Vincent on Wallace. Joseph Alsop, who was present at all the
discussions in question and drafted the recommendations, later testified that
he himself was the author of all the "pro-Communist" passages which Budenz
attributed to Lattimore and that he himself had suggested the relatively
pro-Chiang General Wedemeyer as Stilwell's successor in order to block
Wallace's suggestion of General Chennault for the position.
The radical Right version of these events as written up by John T. Flynn,
Freda Utley, and others, was even more remote from the truth than were
Budenz's or Bentley's versions, although it had a tremendous impact on
American opinion and American relations with other countries in the years
1947-1955. This radical Right fairy tale, which is now an accepted folk myth
in many groups in America, pictured the recent history of the United States,
in regard to domestic reform and in foreign affairs, as a well-organized plot
by extreme Left-wing elements, operating from the White House itself and
controlling all the chief avenues of publicity in the United States, to
destroy the American way of life, based on private enterprise, laissez faire,
and isolationism, in behalf of alien ideologies of Russian Socialism and
British cosmopolitanism (or internationalism). This plot, if we are to
believe the myth, worked through such avenues of publicity as The New York
Times and the Herald Tribune, the Christian Science Monitor and the
Washington Post, the Atlantic Monthly and Harper's Magazine and had at its
core the wild-eyed and bushy-haired theoreticians of Socialist Harvard and
the London School of Economics. It was determined to bring the United States
into World War 11 on the side of England (Roosevelt's first love) and Soviet
Russia (his second love) in order to destroy every finer element of American
life and, as part of this consciously planned scheme, invited Japan to attack
Pearl Harbor, and destroyed Chiang Kai-shek, all the while undermining
America's real strength by excessive spending and unbalanced budgets.
This myth, like all fables, does in fact have a modicum of truth. There does
exist, and has existed for a generation, an international Anglophile network
which operates, to some extent, in the way the radical Right believes the
Communists act. In fact, this network, which we may identify as the Round
Table Groups, has no aversion to cooperating with the Communists, or any
other groups, and frequently does so. I know of the operations of this
network because I have studied it for twenty years and was permitted for two
years, in the early 1960's to examine its papers and secret records. I have
no aversion to it or to most of its aims and have, for much of my life, been
close to it and to many of its instruments. I have objected, both in the past
and recently, to a few of its policies (notably to its belief that England
was an Atlantic rather than a European Power and must be allied, or even
federated, with the United States and must remain isolated from Europe), but
in general my chief difference of opinion is that it wishes to remain
unknown, and I believe its role in history is significant enough to be known.
The Round Table Groups have already been mentioned in this book several
times, notably in connection with the formation of the British Commonwealth
in chapter 4 and in the discussion of appeasement in chapter 12 ("the
Cliveden Set"). At the risk of some repetition, the story will be summarized
here, because the American branch of this organization (sometimes called the
"Eastern Establishment") has played a very significant role in the history of
the United States in the last generation.
The Round Table Groups were semi-secret discussion and lobbying groups
organized by Lionel Curtis, Philip H. Kerr (Lord Lothian), and (Sir) William
S. Marris in 1908-1911. This was done on behalf of Lord Milner, the dominant
Trustee of the Rhodes Trust in the two decades 1905-1925. The original
purpose of these groups was to seek to federate the English-speaking world
along lines laid down by Cecil Rhodes (1853-1902) and William T. Stead
(1849-1912), and the money for the organizational work came originally from
the Rhodes Trust. By 1915 Round Table groups existed in seven countries,
including England, South Africa, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, India, and a
rather loosely organized group in the United States (George Louis Beer,
Walter Lippmann, Frank Aydelotte, Whitney Shepardson, Thomas W. Lamont,
Jerome D. Greene, Erwin D. Canham of the Christian Science Monitor, and
others). The attitudes of the various groups were coordinated by frequent
visits and discussions and by a well-informed and totally anonymous quarterly
magazine, The Round Table, whose first issue, largely written by Philip Kerr,
appeared in November 1910.
The leaders of this group were: Milner, until his death in 1925, followed by
Curtis (1872-1955), Robert H. (Lord) Brand (brother-in-law of Lady Astor)
until his death in 1963, and now Adam D. Marris, son of Sir William and
Brand's successor as managing director of Lazard Brothers bank. The original
intention had been to have collegial leader-ship, but Milner was too
secretive and headstrong to share the role. He did so only in the period
1913-1919 when he held regular meetings with some of his closest friends to
coordinate their activities as a pressure group in the struggle with
Wilhelmine Germany. This they called their "Ginger Group." After Milner's
death in 1925, the leadership was largely shared by the survivors of Milner's
"Kindergarten," that is, the group of young Oxford men whom he used as civil
servants in his reconstruction of South Africa in 1901-1910 go 19 1 Brand
was the last survivor of the "Kindergarten"; since his death, the greatly
reduced activities of the organization have been exercised largely through
the Editorial Committee of The Round Table magazine under Adam Marris.
Money for the widely ramified activities of this organization came originally
from the associates and followers of Cecil Rhodes, chiefly from the Rhodes
Trust itself, and from wealthy associates such as the Beit brothers, from Sir
Abe Bailey, and (after 1915) from the Astor family. Since 1925 there have
been substantial contributions from wealthy individuals and from foundations
and firms associated with the international banking fraternity, especially
the Carnegie United Kingdom Trust, and other organizations associated with J.
P. Morgan, the Rockefeller and Whitney families, and the associates of Lazard
Brothers and of Morgan, Grenfell, and Company.
The chief backbone of this organization grew up along the already existing
financial cooperation running from the Morgan Bank in New York to a group of
international financiers in London led by Lazard Brothers. Milner himself in
1901 had refused a fabulous offer, worth up to $100,000 a year, to become one
of the three partners of the Morgan Bank in London, in succession to the
younger J. P. Morgan who moved from London to join his father in New York
(eventually the vacancy went to E. C. Grenfell, so that the London affiliate
of Morgan became known as Morgan, Grenfell, and Company). Instead, Milner
became director of a number of public banks, chiefly the London joint Stock
Bank, corporate precursor of the Midland Bank. He became one of the greatest
political and financial powers in England, with his disciples strategically
placed throughout England in significant places, such as the editorship of
The Times, the editorship of The Observer, the managing directorship of
Lazard Brothers, various administrative posts, and even Cabinet positions.
Ramifications were established in politics, high finance, Oxford and London
universities, periodicals, the civil service, and tax- exempt foundations.
At the end of the war of 1914, it became clear that the organization of this
system had to be greatly extended. Once again the task was entrusted to
Lionel Curtis who established, in England and each dominion, a front
organization to the existing local Round Table Group. This front
or-ganization, called the Royal Institute of International Affairs, had as
its nucleus in each area the existing submerged Round Table Group. In New
York it was known as the Council on Foreign Relations, and was a front for J.
P. Morgan and Company in association with the very small American Round Table
Group. The American organizers were dominated by the large number of Morgan
"experts," Including Lamont and Beer, who had gone to the Paris Peace
Conference and there became close friend with the similar group of English
"experts" which had been recruited by the Milner group. In fact, the original
plans for the Royal Institute of International Affairs and the Council on
Foreign Relations were drawn up at Paris. The Council of the RIIA (which, by
Curtis's energy came to be housed in Chatham House, across St. James's Square
from the Astors, and was soon known by the name of this headquarters) and the
board of the Council on Foregin Relations have carried ever since the marks
of their origin. Until 1960 the council at Chatham House was dominated by the
dwindling group of Milner's associates, while the paid staff members were
largely the agents of Lionel Curtis. The Round Table for years (until 1961)
was edited from the back door of Chatham House grounds in Ormond Yard, and
its telephone came through the Chatham House switchboard.
The New York branch was dominated by the associates of the Morgan by Bank.
For example, in 1928 the Council on Foreign Relations had John W. Davis as
president, Paul Cravath as vice-president, and a council of thirteen others,
which included Owen D. Young, Russell C. Leffingwell, Norman Davis, Allen
Dulles, George W. Wickersham, Frank L. Polk, Whitney Shepardson, Isaiah
Bowman, Stephen P. Duggan, and Otto Kahn. Throughout its history the council
has been associated with the American Round Tablers, such as Beer, Lippmann,
Shepardson, and Jerome Greene.
The academic figures have been those linked to Morgan, such as James T.
Shotwell, Charles Seymour, Joseph P. Chamberlain, Philip Jessup, Isaiah
Bowman and, more recently, Philip Moseley, Grayson L. Kirk, and Henry M.
Wriston. The Wall Street contacts with these were created originally from
Morgan's influence in handling large academic endowments. In the case of the
largest of these endowments, that at Harvard, the influence was usually
exercised indirectly through "State Street," Boston, which, for much of the
twentieth century, came through the Boston banker Thomas Nelson Perkins.
Closely allied with this Morgan influence were a small group of Wall Street
law firms, whose chief figures were Elihu Root John W. Davis, Paul D.
Cravath, Russell Leffingwell, the Dulles brothers and, more recently, Arthur
H. Dean, Philip D. Reed, and John J. McCloy. Other non-legal agents of Morgan
included men like Owen D. Young and Norman H. Davis.
On this basis, which was originally financial and goes back to George
Peabody, there grew up in the twentieth century a power structure between
London and New York which penetrated deeply into university life, the press,
and the practice of foreign policy. In England the center was the Round Table
Group, while in the United States it was J. P. Morgan and Company or its
local branches in Boston, Philadelphia, and Cleveland. Some rather incidental
examples of the operations of this structure are very revealing, just because
they are incidental. For example, it set up in Princeton a reasonable copy of
the Round Table Group's chief Oxford headquarters, All Souls College. This
copy, called the Institute for Advanced Study, and best known, perhaps, as
the refuge of Einstein, Oppenheimer, John von Neumann, and George F. Kerman,
was organized by Abraham Flexner of the Carnegie Foundation and Rockefeller's
General Education Board after he had experienced the delights of All Souls
while serving as Rhodes Memorial Lecturer at Oxford. The plans were largely
drawn by Tom Jones, one of the Round Table's most active intriguers and
foundation administrators.
The American branch of this "English Establishment" exerted much of its
influence through five American newspapers (The New York Times, New York
Herald Tribune, Christian Science Monitor, the Washington Post, and the
lamented Boston Evening Transcript). In fact, the editor of the Christian
Science Monitor was the chief American correspondent (anonymously) of The
Round Table, and Lord Lothian, the original editor of The Round Table and
later secretary of the Rhodes Trust (1925-1939) and ambassador to Washington,
was a frequent writer in the Monitor. It might be mentioned that the
existence of this Wall Street, Anglo-American axis is quite obvious once it
is pointed out. It is reflected in the fact that such Wall Street luminaries
as John W. Davis, Lewis Douglas, Jock Whitney, and Douglas Dillon were
appointed to be American ambassadors in London.
This double international network in which the Round Table groups formed the
semisecret or secret nuclei of the Institutes of International Affairs was
extended into a third network in 1925, organized by the same people for the
same motives. Once again the mastermind was Lionel Curtis, and the earlier
Round Table Groups and Institutes of International Affairs were used as
nuclei for the new network. However, this new organization for Pacific
affairs was extended to ten countries, while the Round Table Groups existed
only in seven. The new additions, ultimately China, Japan, France, the
Netherlands, and Soviet Russia, had Pacific councils set up from scratch. In
Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, Pacific councils, interlocked and
dominated by the Institutes of Interna-tional Affairs, were set up. In
England, Chatham House served as the Eng-lish center for both nets, while in
the United States the two were parallel creations (not subordinate) of the
Wall Street allies of the Morgan Bank. The financing came from the same
international banking groups and their subsidiary commercial and industrial
firms. In England, Chatham House was financed for both networks by the
contributions of Sir Abe Bailey, the Astor family, and additional funds
largely. acquired by the persuasive powers of Lionel Curtis. The financial
difficulties of the IPR Councils in the British Dominions in the depression
of 1929-1935 resulted in a very revealing effort to save money, when the
local Institute of International Affairs absorbed the local Pacific Council,
both of which were, in a way, expensive and needless fronts for the local
Round Table groups.
The chief aims of this elaborate, semisecret organization were largely
commendable: to coordinate the international activities and outlooks of all
the English-speaking world into one (which would largely, it is true . be
that of the London group); to work to maintain the peace; to help backward,
colonial, and underdeveloped areas to advance toward stability, law and
order, and prosperity along lines somewhat similar to those taught at Oxford
and the University of London (especially the School of Economics and the
Schools of African and Oriental Studies).
These organizations and their financial backers were in no sense reactionary
or Fascistic persons, as Communist propaganda would like to depict them.
Quite the contrary. They were gracious and cultured gentlemen of somewhat
limited social experience who were much concerned with the freedom of
expression of minorities and the rule of law for all, who constantly thought
in terms of Anglo-American solidarity, of political partition and federation,
and who were convinced that they could gracefully civilize the Boers of South
Africa, the Irish, the Arabs, and the Hindus, and who are largely responsible
for the partitions of Ireland, Palestine, and India, as well as the
federations of South Africa, Central Africa, and the West Indies. Their
desire to win over the opposition by cooperation worked with Smuts but failed
with Hertzog, worked with Gandhi but failed with Menon, worked with
Stresemann but failed with Hitler, and has shown little chance of working
with any Soviet leader. If their failures now loom larger than their
successes, this should not be allowed to conceal the high motives with which
they attempted both.
It was this group of people, whose wealth and influence so exceeded their
experience and understanding, who provided much of the framework of influence
which the Communist sympathizers and fellow travelers took over in the United
States in the 1930's. It must be recognized that the power that these
energetic Left-wingers exercised was never their own power or Communist power
but was ultimately the power of the international financial coterie, and,
once the anger and suspicions of the American people were aroused, as they
were by 1950, it was a fairly simple matter to get rid of the Red
sympathizers. Before this could be done, however, a congressional committee,
following backward to their source the threads which led from admitted
Communists like Whittaker Chambers, through Alger Hiss, and the Carnegie
Endowment to Thomas
Lamont and the Morgan Bank, fell into the whole complicated network of the
interlocking tax-exempt foundations. The Eighty-third Congress ill July 1953
set up a Special Committee to Investigate Tax-Exempt Foundations with
Representative B. Carroll Reece, of Tennessee, as chairman. It soon became
clear that people of immense wealth would be unhappy if the investigation
went too far and that the "most respected" newspapers in the country, closely
allied with these men of wealth, would not get excited enough about any
relevations to make the publicity worth while, in terms of votes or campaign
contributions. An interesting report showing the Left-wing associations of
the interlocking nexus of tax-exempt foundations was issued in 1954 rather
quietly. Four years later, the Reece committee's general counsel, Rene A.
Wormser, wrote a shocked, but not shocking, book on the subject called
Foundations - Their Power and Influence.
One of the most interesting members of this Anglo-American power structure
was Jerome D. Greene (1874-1959). Born in Japan of missionary parents, Greene
graduated from Harvard's college and law school by 1899 and became secretary
to Harvard's president and corporation in 1901-1910. This gave him contacts
with Wall Street which made him general manager of the Rockefeller Institute
(1910-1912), assistant to John D. Rockefeller in philanthropic work for two
years, then trustee to the Rockefeller Institute, to the Rockefeller
Foundation, and to the Rockefeller General Education Board until 1939- For
fifteen years (1917-1932) he was with the Boston investment banking firm of
Lee, Higginson, and Company, most of the period as its chief officer, as well
as with its London branch. As executive secretary of the American section of
the Allied Maritime Transport Council, stationed in London in 1918, he
lived in Toynbee Hall, the world's first settlement house, which had been
founded by Alfred Milner and his friends in 1884. This brought him in contact
with the Round Table Group in England, a contact which was strengthened in
1919 when he was secretary to the Reparations Com-mission at the Paris Peace
Conference. Accordingly, on his return to the United States he was one of the
early figures in the establishment of the
Council on Foregn Relations, which served as the New York branch of Lionel
Curtis's Institute of International Affairs.
As an investment banker, Greene is chiefly remembered for his sales of
millions of dollars of the fraudulent securities of the Swedish match king,
Ivar Kreuger. That Greene offered these to the American investing Public in
good faith is evident from the fact that he put a substantial part of his own
fortune in the same investments. As a consequence,
Kreuger's suicide in Paris in April 1932 left Greene with little money and no
jot). He wrote to Lionel Curtis, asking for help, and was given, for two
years, a professorship of international relations at Aberystwyth, Wales. The
Round Table Group controlled that professorship from its founding by David
Davies in 1919, in spite of the fact that Davies, who was made a peer in
1932, had broken with the Round Table because of its subversion of the League
of Nations and European collective security.
On his return to America in 1934, Greene also returned to his secretaryship
of the Harvard Corporation and became, for the remainder of his life,
practically a symbol of Yankee Boston, as trustee and officer of the Boston
Symphony Orchestra, the Gardner Museum in Fenway Court, the New England
Conservatory of Music, the American Academy in Rome, the Brookings
Institution, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the General Education Board
(only until 1939). He was also director of the Harvard Tercentenary
Celebration in 1934-1937.
Greene is of much greater significance in indicating the real influences
within the Institute of Pacific Relations than any Communists or fellow
travelers. He wrote the constitution for the IPR in 1926, was for years the
chief conduit for Wall Street funds and influence into the organization, was
treasurer of the American Council for three years, and chairman for three
more, as well as chairman of the International Council for four years.
Jerome Greene is a symbol of much more than the Wall Street influence in the
IPR. He is also a symbol of the relationship between the financial circles of
London and those of the eastern United States which reflects one of the most
powerful influences in twentieth-century American and world history. The two
ends of this English-speaking axis have sometimes been called, perhaps
facetiously, the English and American Establishments. There is, however, a
considerable degree of truth behind the joke, a truth which reflects a very
real power structure. It is this power structure which the Radical Right in
the United States has been attacking for years in the belief that they are
attacking the Communists. This is particularly true when these attacks are
directed, as they so frequently are at "Harvard Socialism," or at "Left-wing
newspapers" like The New York Times and the Washington Post, or at
foundations and their dependent establishments, such as the Institute of
International Education.
These misdirected attacks by the Radical Right did much to confuse the
American people in the period 1948-1955, and left consequences which were
still significant a decade later. By the end of 1953, most of these attacks
had run their course. The American people, thoroughly bewildered at
widespread charges of twenty years of treason and subversion, had rejected
the Democrats and put into the White House the Republican Party's traditional
favorite, a war hero, Dwight D. Eisenhower. At the time, two events, one
public and one secret, were still in process. The public one was the Korean
War of 1950-1953; the secret one was the race for the thermonuclear bomb.
pps. 938-956
-----
Aloha, He'Ping,
Om, Shalom, Salaam.
Em Hotep, Peace Be,
All My Relations.
Omnia Bona Bonis,
Adieu, Adios, Aloha.
Amen.
Roads End
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