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22 chapters
CHAPTER I NEW WORLDS FOR OLD
CHAPTER I NEW WORLDS FOR OLD
I WAS born in 1856, at Mannheim, in the Grand Duchy of Baden. That was the old Germany, very different from the Prussianized empire with which America was to go to war sixty years later, and very different again from the bustling life of the western world to which I was to be introduced so soon and in which I was to play a part unlike anything which my most fanciful dreams ever pictured. Indeed, those were days of idyllic simplicity in South Germany and especially in that little city on the Rhin
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CHAPTER II SCHOOL DAYS
CHAPTER II SCHOOL DAYS
M Y family took up their residence at 92 Congress Street, Brooklyn, which my elder brothers and two sisters, our pioneers, had prepared for us, and though handicapped as we were by our small knowledge of English, we younger children began our studies at the De Graw Street Public School in the September following our arrival. Eight months later, on the first day of May, 1867, we moved to Manhattan. It was a very simple New York to which we came. In domestic economy, portières were unknown, rugs a
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CHAPTER III APPRENTICED TO THE LAW
CHAPTER III APPRENTICED TO THE LAW
W HEN I left City College, my father wanted me to become a civil engineer, but a brief experience in an engineer’s office convinced me that I lacked the requisite mathematical foundation, so I gave it up and accepted a position as assistant bookkeeper and errand boy at $6 a week in the uptown branch of the Phœnix Fire Insurance Company. In September, 1871, I improved myself by securing a $10 position with Bloomingdale & Company, who were then in the wholesale “corset and fancy-goods” bus
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CHAPTER IV REAL ESTATE
CHAPTER IV REAL ESTATE
M Y first purchase of real estate was No. 32 West Thirty-fifth Street, a twenty-two-foot, white marble, high-stoop building. I bought it for the modest sum of $15,000 and resold it at an advance of $500, and thought I was doing well. To-day it is worth at least $110,000. This, however, was not my first experience with real estate, for that was in 1872 when, at the request of my preceptor, Mr. Ferdinand Kurzman, I undertook for an extra compensation of $5 a month to collect for him the rents of N
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CHAPTER V FINANCE
CHAPTER V FINANCE
I HAD suddenly been catapulted from my comparatively unknown law office into the very midst of high finance. I was president of a board of directors in which but a few weeks ago I should have rejoiced to have been the junior member. My associates were all leaders in their various pursuits, and gloried in the power and wealth that they had accumulated while struggling to reach these eminent positions. At first I was but a silent observer amongst a lot of gladiators. Here was a set of dominators w
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CHAPTER VI SOCIAL SERVICE
CHAPTER VI SOCIAL SERVICE
D URING all these years of which I have been writing my spirit was in a never-ceasing conflict with itself, a conflict between idealism and materialism. My boyish imagination had been fired with a vision of a life of unselfish devotion to the welfare of others, and in an earlier chapter I have described the influence of religious and ethical teachings upon my character and activities. But the necessity of earning a livelihood had early thrust me into the arena of business. Once there, I became a
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CHAPTER VII EARLY POLITICAL EXPERIENCES
CHAPTER VII EARLY POLITICAL EXPERIENCES
M Y earliest contact with the inner workings of politics was reading the dramatic story of the downfall of the infamous Tweed Ring. Tweed had seemed a wonderful figure; we boys knew him only in his largest successful aspects as a dictator: the originator of Riverside Drive, the constructor of the lavish Court House, the arbiter of the City’s destinies. He had made John T. Hoffman, Governor of the State, and A. Oakey Hall, Mayor of the City. I had come into personal touch with the picturesque Oak
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CHAPTER VIII MY ENTRANCE INTO NATIONAL POLITICS
CHAPTER VIII MY ENTRANCE INTO NATIONAL POLITICS
“C ONSCIENCE doth make cowards of us all.” Not mine—mine made me a politician. At fifty-five years of age, financially independent, and rich in experience, and recently released from the toils of materialism, it ceaselessly confronted me with my duty to pay back, in the form of public service, the overdraft which I had been permitted to make upon the opportunities of this country. Repayment in money alone would not suffice: I must pay in the form of personal service, for which my experience had
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CHAPTER IX THE CAMPAIGN OF 1912
CHAPTER IX THE CAMPAIGN OF 1912
W ILSON’S nomination in 1912 was equivalent to an election. The split in the Republican Party made this a foregone conclusion. They forgot the interests of the country in a bitter internal struggle for the control of their party machinery. Roosevelt, furiously ambitious to regain his power, was pitted against the old organization bosses, who were determined to retain possession of the party. Led by Penrose they were lost in an implacable rage against the “rebel” who had once unhorsed them in the
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CHAPTER X THE SOCIAL SIDE OF CONSTANTINOPLE
CHAPTER X THE SOCIAL SIDE OF CONSTANTINOPLE
T HE Senate confirmed my appointment as Ambassador to Turkey on September 4, 1913. Soon afterward I went to Washington to familiarize myself with the duties of my office and to receive my instructions. A new Ambassador is allowed thirty days for this purpose. Usually, he spends them in the State Department, taking a sort of course of intensive training. I did not take the full month allowed me. The Chief of the Division of Near Eastern Affairs took me in hand, and in a series of conversations ou
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CHAPTER XI MY TRIP TO THE HOLY LAND
CHAPTER XI MY TRIP TO THE HOLY LAND
A LL through the winter of 1913-14, though busily engaged in mastering my other duties as Ambassador, there were constantly two problems interesting me. The first was the American missionary activities, whose ramifications reached into all parts of Turkey, and whose many and varied requests, though intelligently interpreted by Dr. W. W. Peet, I could not fully grasp, owing to the meagreness of my knowledge of the men and women concerned, and of the physical conditions surrounding them in their a
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CHAPTER XII THE CAMPAIGN OF 1916
CHAPTER XII THE CAMPAIGN OF 1916
I N January, 1916, I applied to the State Department for a leave of absence, so that I might pay a visit to the United States, which I had not seen for more than two years. I had begun to feel the effects of the nervous strain of my labours to avert the terrible fate of the Armenians and Jews. These labours, and my experiences with German diplomatic intrigue in Constantinople during the war, have already been described in my earlier book, published in 1918 under the title, “Ambassador Morgenthau
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CHAPTER XIII MY MEETINGS WITH JOFFRE, HAIG, CURRIE, AND PERSHING
CHAPTER XIII MY MEETINGS WITH JOFFRE, HAIG, CURRIE, AND PERSHING
J UST one week after the United States entered the war, President Wilson invited twenty-four men from all parts of the country to meet in Washington on April 21, 1917, to consider means of financing the American Red Cross. As I was one of the group, I came to Washington a day earlier, and a few of us met at dinner. Of the guests that I can now recall there were Charles D. Norton, Cornelius N. Bliss, Jr., Cleveland H. Dodge, Vance McCormick, and Eliot Wadsworth. We all agreed that the funds shoul
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CHAPTER XIV JOHN PURROY MITCHEL
CHAPTER XIV JOHN PURROY MITCHEL
S HORTLY after my return from Europe, John Purroy Mitchel came to my house to seek advice on a matter concerning both the destinies of his city and, as the event proved, the end of his own career. He asked me whether he ought to run again for Mayor, or accept a tempting business offer that had just been made him. Mitchel was always an attractive and frequently an inspiring figure in municipal affairs. A typical American, of fighting stock, the grandson of a man that had battled for free Ireland
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CHAPTER XV A HECTIC FORTNIGHT—AND OTHERS
CHAPTER XV A HECTIC FORTNIGHT—AND OTHERS
T HE Mitchel campaign was an incident—important and affecting, but only an incident—in the stirring summer and fall of 1917, when we had just entered the war. My trip to Europe that summer, on a government mission, fixed a new and broader purpose in my mind. While in Turkey in 1914 to 1916 I had seen only the German machinations and listened to the German apologies. Now I had observed the devastation wrought in France and heard from French and British lips their version of the war. Moreover, my
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CHAPTER XVI THE INTERNATIONAL RED CROSS
CHAPTER XVI THE INTERNATIONAL RED CROSS
W E sailed on the Leviathan , formerly the Vaterland . When we boarded the ship, we found the dock was elaborately decorated for the arrival of the Secretary of the Navy; the handsome royal suite was reserved for him and his wife. Josephus Daniels, no longer wearing his customary white suit, now displayed an admiral’s cap, and was surrounded by admirals and captains who were under his orders. He was the Secretary of the Navy and to the chagrin of some of our prominent ironmasters, he had assumed
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CHAPTER XVII THE PEACE CONFERENCE
CHAPTER XVII THE PEACE CONFERENCE
I N Paris we found an entirely different state of affairs from that at Cannes. I was drawn almost immediately into the maelstrom of the Peace Conference: it was a rude awakening. Instead of men who were freely utilizing their individual attainments for the general good, this was a battle of conflicting interests, petty rivalries and schemes for national aggrandizement. Each group of all the world’s ablest and craftiest statesmen and politicians was seeking advantages for its own political entity
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CHAPTER XVIII MY MISSION TO POLAND
CHAPTER XVIII MY MISSION TO POLAND
P ARIS, in 1919, had emerged from her darkness. She had ceased her weary vigils for air raids. She was no longer troubled by the nightmare of Emperor William at the head of his army triumphantly entering her gates, marching down the Champs-Elysées, and, like his grandfather in 1871, mortally offending her pride by defiling the Arc de Triomphe. Instead, she rejoiced daily in contemplating the thousands of captured German guns which had been placed along this very route to celebrate her victory. C
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CHAPTER XIX ZIONISM A SURRENDER, NOT A SOLUTION[2]
CHAPTER XIX ZIONISM A SURRENDER, NOT A SOLUTION[2]
Z IONISM is the most stupendous fallacy in Jewish history. I assert that it is wrong in principle and impossible of realization; that it is unsound in its economics, fantastical in its politics, and sterile in its spiritual ideals. Where it is not pathetically visionary, it is a cruel playing with the hopes of a people blindly seeking their way out of age-long miseries. These are bold and sweeping assertions, but in this chapter I shall undertake to make them good. The very fervour of my feeling
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APPENDIX REPORT OF THE MISSION OF THE UNITED STATES TO POLAND
APPENDIX REPORT OF THE MISSION OF THE UNITED STATES TO POLAND
American Commission to Negotiate Peace, Mission to Poland. Paris, October 3, 1919. To the American commission to negotiate peace. Gentlemen : 1. A mission, consisting of Mr. Henry Morgenthau, Brig. Gen. Edgar Jadwin, and Mr. Homer H. Johnson, was appointed by the American commission to negotiate peace to investigate Jewish matters in Poland. The appointment of such a mission had previously been requested by Mr. Paderewski, president of the council of ministers of the Republic of Poland. On June
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AMERICAN COMMISSION TO NEGOTIATE PEACE
AMERICAN COMMISSION TO NEGOTIATE PEACE
Warsaw, 10 August, 1919. My dear Mr. President : In compliance with your request to submit to you in writing the suggestions I made to you last evening, I desire to state that the interest of President Wilson and the citizenry of the United States was not only to investigate the various occurrences during and after the occupation of some of the cities in your country as well as the alleged persecutions of the Jews, but also to ascertain the entire matter so objectively, impartially, and disinter
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MANDATES OR WAR?[3]
MANDATES OR WAR?[3]
WORLD PEACE HELD TO BE MENACED UNLESS THE UNITED STATES ASSUMES CONTROL OF THE SULTAN’S FORMER DOMINIONS I am one of those who believe that the United States should accept a mandate for Constantinople and the several provinces in Asia Minor which constitute what is left of the Ottoman Empire. I am aware that this proposition is not popular with the American people. But it seems to me to be a matter in which we do not have much choice. Nations, like individuals, are constantly subject to forces w
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