Death of a Statesman

The best and the worst of a generation that has not yet died out can be summed up in an epitaph for Sumner Welles: he was a gentleman. A career diplomat, for ten years Roosevelt's Under Secretary of State, Welles was the very prototype of the suave, dignified and urbane public official. In a profession in which respect is everything, he maintained an impeccablbe record in the eyes of his colleagues.

But although the race of those who will remember him as one of their own is disappearing, historians will keep his name from being forgotten, for a few decades at least. Like John Hay and the "Open Door," Welles will be remembered because of slogan that sums up his major accomplishment: the "Good Neighbor" policy. To him is due the credit for opening the battle against dollar diplomacy. If the battle is yet far from won, we owe a debt of respect to the man who challenged not only the dominant forces around him, but also his own background.

Welles was the kind of man that Henry Adams thought was dying out around the turn of the century. A graduate of Harvard College '14, grandson of Senator Charles Sumner, (who is perhaps best remembered for having said, "A Congressman is a hog. You must take a stick and hit him on the snout!") Welles rose rapidly in the diplomatic service. The friendship of Franklin D. Roosevelt and others who recognized him as one of their own were of value in a day in which the State Department was one of Washington's more exclusive clubs.

But although that world was narrow, it was not yet lax. Proper conduct was defined in terms of personal integrity and loyalty, qualities which have declined in this era of McCarthy purges and USIA propaganda techniques. Welles could defy powerful business interests and his own friends in the name of moral principle. The Good Neighbor was a creation of personal conscience, not of a cynical, pragmatic appraisal of the importance of allies in a world struggle.

Strengths and weaknesses, however, are opposite sides of the same coin. Qualities of personal integrity and moral conscience are not enough to counteract the sub-rational and even sub-human forces of the modern world. There is something depressing in reading the record of Welles' career: highly praised but abortive plans for peace conferences in 1939, polite missions to the Axis leaders, "lucid and well-informed" reports on the Munich crisis. It is a kind of tragic record of the death throes of personal diplomacy. A man of wit, fore-night, honor, and good-will was totally incapable of deflecting a catastrophic course of events. Leadership that would have resulted in a "peace with honor" in the days of Talleyrand had no way of even comprehending a Hitler or a Mussolini.

Welles' world has long since passed away; it was dying long before he was born. But the diplomatic service is in many ways one of the world's most conservative institutions. That is the reason that what occurs at conference tables and Embassy cocktail parties has had so little effect on events. American diplomats established cordial relations with men as important as themselves. The old world of personal diplomacy in which gentlemen reached equitable settlements of remote matters has little relationship to the world in which men kill and die for their livelihood.

Outwardly, the diplomatic world is still the same. Unfortunately, the greatest change has been to replace the somewhat austere, unbending morality of a Sumner Welles with a fraternity-brother's back-slapping goodwill. Perhaps a new breed of men will emerge having the clear sight of what our task demands of us in the real world behind the polite formalities. Hopefully, they will also prove that honor and good-will have not died with Sumner Welles.