JOHN FOSTER DULLES AND THE FEDERAL COUNCIL OF CHURCHES, 1937-1949 DISSERTATION Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements of the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University by Albert N. Keim, B.A., M.A. ******* The Ohio State University 1971 Approved by Adviser Department of History ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I am indebted to Dr. Constant H. Jacquet, Jr., Director of the Research Library of the National Council of Churches, for giving me access to the National Council of Churches Archives. I am grateful for the assistance rendered by Mrs. Wanda M. Randall, Assistant to the Curator of Manuscripts, during my research in the Dulles Papers at Princeton University Library. Dr. Georgia Harkness, Dr. Roswell P. Barnes, and Dr. Samuel McCrea Cavert all provided valuable advice at various stages of the project. My adviser, Dr. Robert H. Bremner, gave unfailing counsel at every stage of the work, I owe a special debt to my wife, Leanna, who loyally supported the project from beginning to end. VITA October 31, 1935 Born - Uniontown, Ohio 1963 ........... B.A., Eastern Mennonite College, Harrisonburg, Virginia 1965 M.A., University of Virginia, Charlottesville, Virginia 1965-1969 Instructor, Eastern Mennonite College, Harrisonburg, Virginia 1969-1970 Teaching Associate, Department of History, The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio 1970-1971 Dissertation Year Fellow, The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio FIELDS OF STUDY Major Field: History Social History of the United States Since 1900. Professor Robert H. Bremner Political History of the United States Since 1900. Professor K. Austin Kerr Political and Social History of the United States, 1850-1900. Professor Francis Weisenburger Renaissance and Reformation. Professor Harold Grimm TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ACKNOWLEDGMENTS.........................................ii VITA .................................................. iii INTRODUCTION ........................................ 1 Chapter I. FROM OXFORD TO GENEVA, 1937-1939 5 II. THE FORMATION OF THE COMMISSION ON A JUST AND DURABLE PEACE, 1939-1941 4-1 III. THE COMMISSION SEARCHES FOR A PROGRAM OF ACTION, 1941-1942 ......................... 79 IV. THE CRUSADE FOR A WORLD ORGANIZATION BEGINS, 1943-1944 ......................... 116 V. THE CAMPAIGN FOR A CURATIVE AND CREATIVE WORLD ORDER, 1944-1945 15^ VI. THE SEARCH FOR A JUST AND DURABLE PEACE CONTINUES, 1945-1949 203 CONCLUSION ............................................ 250 BIBLIOGRAPHY 262 INTRODUCTION Rain fell intermittently as John Foster Dulles and Archibald McLeish stepped from an Air Force plane at La Guardia Airport on June 24, 1945. The two men were re­ turning from the United Nations Organizing Conference at San Francisco, where McLeish, an assistant Secretary of State, had served as an aide to Secretary of State Stettin- ius. Dulles was chief advisor to the United States dele­ gation. With a quick handshake the two men parted, McLeish for Washington, D.C. where he began planning the campaign to assure Senate acceptance of the new United Nations Charter, and Dulles for Manhattan where, on the following day, he met with the executive committee of the Federal Council of Churches of Christ in America to report on the conference and to begin plans for a concerted effort by the Federal Council to rally American Protestantism in support of the ratification of the new world organization. •This episode highlights the role which Dulles played during the 1940's, serving simultaneously as spokes­ man for Protestant world order concerns and as a leader of the American foreign policy establishment. His dual role as churchman and statesman represents a unique chap­ ter in the annals of American church-state relations. Dulles' adult life can be conveniently divided into three chronological segments. Between 1911 and 1937 he established himself as one of the nation's leading experts in international law. During the second period— 1937-1949— he continued his law practice, but devoted a large share of his time to the churches in his capacity as chairman of the Federal Council of Churches Commission on a Just and Durable Peace. From 1949 to his death in 1959 he served as a public servant, first as a United States Senator from New York, then as an adviser to the State Department, and finally as Secretary of State under Eisenhower. This paper will examine the course of Dulles' church leadership in foreign affairs during the period 1937-1949. — Dulles' work as a churchman coincided with an era of unusual activism by American Protestantism in the field of international affairs. Much of the activity of those years was centered in the work of the Commission on a Just and Durable Peace, established in 1940. For most of the decade of the 1940's the Commission defined the issues, hammered out positions, and lobbied the government on be­ half of the approximately thirty million Protestants affiliated with the Federal Council of Churches. The Federal Council of Churches, predecessor of the present National Council of Churches, was created in 1908 as an agency to represent twenty-five constituent ' 3 Protestant denominations in matters of common concern. The policies of the Federal Council were determined by repre­ sentatives of the member-denominations who met in biennial plenary sessions, and in bi-monthly meetings of the Execu­ tive Committee of the organization. The Executive Com­ mittee was an elective body of about fifty members (two or three delegates from each denomination) with a Presi­ dent, Vice-President, Secretary, and Treasurer. An administrative secretariat, divided into departments rep­ resenting major areas of church concern, and headed by a general secretary, carried out the actual work of the Council. The Department of International Justice and Goodwill was responsible for the world order concerns of the organization. The Commission on a Just and Durable Peace was organized as a special affiliate to the Depart­ ment of International Justice and Goodwill. Under the leadership of Dulles the Commission became an important adjunct of the World War II internation alist crusade to end American isolationism and to create a new international organization to replace the League of Nations. After the War such issues as the atom bomb, the Cold War, and the peace settlements became the objects of Commission activity. It is the thesis of this paper that the assertive character of the Commission's activity and the relative success which it enjoyed as an advocate of Protestant world order positions, was to a substantial degree due to the leadership of John Foster Dulles. His importance lay not in the ideas he projected, for those v/ere largely derived from his clerical colleagues, but in the strategic position which he occupied as a leader of the American foreign policy establishment. It was his access to the instrumentalities of power and influence which provided the churches an unprecedented opportunity to bring their influence to bear on foreign policy issues What follows is an effort to recreate the course of American Protestant world order activity during the decade of the 1940's. CHAPTER I FROM OXFORD TO GENEVA, 1937-1939 John Foster Dulles devoted his entire life to international affairs. He came to his vocation and avocation naturally. His maternal grandfather, John Watson Foster, in the course of a distinguished career ' as a lawyer and diplomat, served as Secretary of State under Benjamin Harrison; Robert Lansing, an uncle, was Secretary of State under Wilson. These family connections led to Dulles' first involvements in international affairs. In 1907, during his junior year at Princeton University, he accompanied his grandfather to the second Hague Peace Conference where his grandfather represented the Chinese government. Dulles' knowledge of French gained him the post of secretary to the Chinese delegation.^- After graduation from Princeton Dulles entered law school at George Washington University. He began his career as a clerk in the famous Wall Street law firm of 2 Sullivan and Cromwell in 1911. When the Unxted States entered World War I Dulles obtained a commission as an army major assigned to the General Staff in Washington, D.C. In 1918 he became an assistant to Vance McCormick, chairman 5 of the War Trade Board. He was assigned to negotiate agreements with the neutral countries in Europe to tighten up the Allied blockade of Germany and make neutral shipping available to the Allies. This work, plus the fact that his uncle was Secretary of State, led to his assignment as a member of the American delegation to the Paris Peace Conference in 1919. He served as chief American counsel on reparations and other financial matters, and drafted the clauses of the Treaty of Versailles which dealt with reparations. After his experience at the Paris Peace Conference Dulles was assigned much of the international legal work of Sullivan and Cromwell. In 1924 he became special counsel to the American underwriters of the Dawes loan to Germany. In 1927 he was counsel to the Polish government in its monetary stabilization problems. On that occasion 3 he worked closely with Jean Monnet of France. He became head of Sullivan and Cromwell in 1927. By the late 1930's Dulles had achieved financial security and a reputation as a highly successful inter­ national lawyer. He headed a Wall Street law firm of twenty partners and eighty lawyers, and was director of fifteen corporations. Dulles' personal success, however, stood in sharp contrast to the disintegration of world order. The structure he had helped to fashion in 1919 was falling into chaos. 7 The year 1937 was a turning point in Dulles' life because during that year his faith in the Church as a vehicle for promoting a peaceful world order was kindled. He alluded to that experience in a speech in 1949: I started as a law clerk in an international law firm and came to work on many international problems . During that period it did not seem to me that what I had .