The Partisan Rhetoric of Henry Cabot Lodge, Sr
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THE PARTISAN RHETORIC OF HENRY CABOT LODGE, SR. ' STANFORD PAYNE GWIN A DISSEKTATION PRESENTED TO THE GRADUATE COUNCH. OF THE UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA 1968 Copyright by Stanford Payne Gwin 1968 For Charlotte ACKNO’tVLEDGMENTS My grateful appreciation goes to Professor Donald E. Williams of the University of Florida Department of Speech for his encouragement and direction of this study, to Mr. George Cabot Lodge, Jr., for permitting me to use the Henry Cabot Lodge, Sr., manuscripts; to the Head Librarian and staff of the Massachusetts Historical Associ- ation for their assistance in the use of those manuscripts; to the other members of the University of Florida faculty who have served on my doctoral committee: Professors C. Franklin Karns, Norman Markel, and L. L. Zimmerman of the Department of Speech, and Professor David M. Chalmers of the Department of History; and to all those others who have assisted in the preparation of this manuscript. I also wish to express my gratitude to the Graduate School of the University of Florida for the financial assistance that made possible my travel to examine the Lodge papers. XV TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ACKNOWLEDGMENTS iv CHAPTER PART ONE: INTRODUCTION I. THE NATURE AND PURPOSE OF THE STUDY 2 II. BACKGROUND OF THE SPEAKER 40 III. THE PLACE OF HENRY CABOT LODGE IN AMERICAN HISTORY 89 PART TWO: THE PUBLIC ADDRESS OF HENRY CABOT LODGE IV. OCCASIONAL ADDRESSES OF HENRY CABOT LODGE . 138 V. POLITICAL SPEAKING 233 VI. FORENSIC SPEAKING 288 PART THREE: CONCLUSION VII. SUMMARY EVALUATION. 419 BIBLIOGPAPHY 438 BIOGPAPHICAL SKETCH 448 V PART ONE INTRODUCTION CHAPTER I THE NATURE AND PURPOSE OF THE STUDY On October 26, 1932, the State of Massachusetts ded- icated a statue in bronze of Henry Cabot Lodge, Sr. Senator David I . Walsh began his memorial oration for that occasion with words that were particularly appropriate for a contro- versial public man who had also been a prominent historian: Each generation of mankind would fain bear testimony and leave to posterity some memorial to inform those who follow why they mourn the passing of their conspicuous leaders, and in the hope that the erasing finger of time may spare their service to be known and understood by future generations Lodge expressed this same sentiment himself on the occasion of the death of Woodrow Wilson: At this moment, of course, there is a great outburst from the people who admired him, and this is, all as it should be and very natural, but he will now pass into the keeping of history, and there ... he will be justly judged. Professor John A. Garraty, the only definitive biographer of Lodge, closes his book with the suggestion that this senti- 2 ment might have been Lodge's request regarding his own life; ^Massachusetts Executive Department, A Memorial to Henry Cabot Lodge (Boston: Jordan and More Press, 1932, p. 31. 2 Henry Cabot Lodge to W. Sturgis Bigelow, February 5, 2 3 the work of his last years was a great effort to keep the record straight so that judgment might indeed be "just." Garraty's closing, however, seems inconsistent with his in- troduction to the biography, in which he portrays Lodge as one of those "controversial figures" who is unable to dis- card his "stern partisan mask" outside the halls of Congress. In trying to characterize Lodge, Garraty also captures the great difficulty in studying such a man; A man of this type is interesting to write about, but anyone who attempts the biography of such a man faces the danger of being swamped by the qualities that made him controversial in his own day. If this happens the result is partisanship — and more controversy."^ In death, as in life. Lodge's personal and political activi- ties have been viewed and described with partisanship and controversy. Even Garraty's admirable attempt to write with objectivity often simply presents both sides of controver- sies or supports a position that is subject to refutation by counter-evidence of equal weight. If such controversy produces difficulty for the his- torian, the difficulty is compounded for the rhetorical critic. Working with the body of materials pertaining to Lodge, the rhetorician finds himself continually dealing with partisan issues and polarized audiences. He has the advantage of being able to -describe audience set relatively 1924, Henry Cabot Lodge MSS, Massachusetts Historical Associ- ation, Boston. Also see John A. Garraty, Henry Cabot Lodge ; A Biography (New York; Alfred A. Knopf, 1953), p. 424. “^Garraty, Lodge , p. vix. 4 easily, and the disadvantage of having to differentiate be- tween the influence of rhetoric and that of the rhetor. This study will not resolve any controversies about the activities or personality of its subject. It will produce some conclusions about the persuasiveness of one of the most influential political figures in the era when the United States was becoming a world power. The figure of Henry Cabot Lodge is uniquely subject to analysis by rhetorical investigation for several reasons. First, his partisan character made him more likely to depend upon public persuasion instead of personal influence as a political power base. Second, Lodge's audience adaptation problems were often acute, and audience polarities may be easily described. Third, his real ethos and that described by his critics present key contradictions in his character. Fourth, logical and emotional proofs are readily separable in his speeches; in a number of instances the separate in- fluences of the two may be described and measured. Fifth, Lodge and his friends were continually concerned with the content, structure, and impact of speeches; such a society is likely to be, and was, realistically critical of its own rhetoric. Sixth, Lodge's extant speech manuscripts are re- markably accurate records of what he actually said. Seventh, Lodge's speeches provide examples of the oratory of a speaker trained in public address and learned in classical rhetorical theory; he was, also, a rhetorical critic of the speech . 5 models of history. Finally, the tools of rhetorical criti- cism, impartial in a different way than those of biographer and historian, should provide some insights into the man and his influence. Lodge the Man Most opinions of the personality of Henry Cabot Lodge are dominated by opinions of his activities in the debates over the League of Nations. Where this domination has been challenged by further study the result is contro- versy. Garraty remarked in an article in American Heritage 4 that Lodge was "often wrong but never evil." Others have not been so kind. Karl Schriftgeisser wrote an extremely antipathetic biography.^ Those who favored ratification of the League have universally condemned the Lodge personality; Alan Cranston^ and Thomas A. Bailey^ are examples of this group. Commentators who wdre Lodge's contemporaries, like 8 Q Clxnton W. Gilbert and Edward G. Lowry, ^ condemned the ^John A. Garraty, "Spoiled Child of American Poli- tics," American Heritage . VI, No. 5 (August, 1955), 59. ^Karl Schriftgeisser, The Gentleman from Massachu- setts: Henry Cabot Lodge (Boston; Little, Brown and Co., 1944) r ”Alan Cranston, The Killing of the Peace (New York; The Viking Press, 1945) . 7Thomas A. Bailey, Woodrow Wilson and the Great Be- trayal (New York; The Macmillan Company, 1945) . Q Clinton W. Gilbert, The Mirrors of Washington (New York; G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1921), pp. 180-90. ^Edward G. Lowry, Washington Close-Ups (New York; Houghton Mifflin Company, 1921), pp. 180-90. b Senator with great sarcasm. Some attacked his personality; seme, the society from which he sprang; some, more honestly, his activities in the League debates. No one attacked his sincere motives, perhaps because no one knew them. More significantly, no one attacked his argument, and that rhe- torical element was plainly exposed to the eye and ear of every opponent and critic. Almost all antipathetic writers hinge their opinions of Lodge on their opinions of the League or of Woodrow Wilson. On the other hand. Lodge's friends have risen to his defense at every instance. Bishop William A. Lawrence wrote a friendly biography shortly after Lodge's death. Sir Cecil Spring- Rice, the British diplomat, was an ardent League advocate; nevertheless, he defended Lodge, the some- time Anglophobe, against popular condemnation. Even John Sharp Williams of Mississippi, who was almost as highly educated as Lodge and equally astute, and who had grown to hate the man he labeled the "murderer of Woodrow Wilson," was willing to admit after Lodge's death that the bulk of ^^Strangely, there is no apparent counter-opinion to the viewpoint of the liberal historian writing about isolationism. All sources investigated condemn the influ- ence of isolationism, identify Lodge with it, and, conse- quently, condemn Lodge. For an example see Bailey above (fn 7) or Selig Adler, The Isolationist Impulse: Its Twentieth Century Reaction (New York; The Free Press — The Macmillan Company, 1957) ^^William A. Lawrence, Henry Cabot Lodge; A Bio- graphical Sketch (New York; Houghton Mifflin Company, 1925) ^^Ibid., p. 179. 7 his contributions to the nation "were positive. Appar- ently there were no neutrals to Henry Cabot Lodge. As a result of this bias on the part of his contem- poraries, the extant image of Lodge's personality is indef- inite. Extreme diversity among opinions makes them diffi- cult to reconcile. The key to Lodge's personality is the word partisan," but it must be taken in a larger sense than the usual meaning for such a man. Lodge's personality will be carefully described and its enigmas analyzed in evaluating his ethos in Chapter II. The Speaker Lodge, as a speaker, found his peer criticism running the same gamut of expression that identified the reaction to him as an individual.