The Life and Times of the American Journalsit Arno
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THE LIFE AND TIMES OF THE AMERICAN JOURNALSIT ARNO DOSCH FLEUROT (1879-1951): DEFINING AMERICAN LIBERALISM IN WORLD WAR ONE ERA THROUGH THE LENSE OF FOREIGN REPORTING ____________________________________ A Thesis Presented to the Faculty of California State University, Fullerton ____________________________________ In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Master of Arts in History ____________________________________ By Angelina Slepchenkova Thesis Committee Approval: Volker Janssen, Department of History, Chair Benjamin Cawthra, Department of History Cora Granata, Department of History Summer, 2017 ABSTRACT This study examines life and times of Arno Dosch Fleurot (1879-1951), the American veteran newspaperman, who was a foreign correspondent in Europe since 1914 and reported to Americans about many important world events – World War One and World War Two, revolutions in Russia and Germany to name a few. The focus of this research is Dosch Fleurot’s experience as a foreign reporter during World War One and in the early 1920s, in the period that became the determinant for his professional and personal life. His witnesses and opinions about the war and its outcomes reflected in his articles for the Worlds Work, a monthly magazine, the New York World, and some other newspapers that published or syndicated his articles and his correspondence with family in Portland, Oregon exemplify the challenges the conflict brought to people with a liberal outlook. Indeed, the war experience raised doubts among the ranks of American liberals, and Dosch Fleurot was not the exception, about their core belief in the inevitable spread of democracy throughout the world. The purpose of this study is to examine Dosch Fleurot’s evolution of this idealistic belief and illustrate how American liberals tried to reconcile their advocacy of the spread of democracy with the national interests of the United States. Since the beginning of World War One, the question of how international the American foreign policy should be became a controversial issue in the American society. The debate continues to this day. ii TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT ................................................................................................................... ii INTRODUCTION ......................................................................................................... 1 Chapter 1. REPORTING FROM THE WESTERN FRONT (1914-1916): WAITING FOR A SOCIAL REVOLUTION......................................................................... 14 American Neutrality in Action ............................................................................ 15 Neutrality of Spirit ................................................................................................ 28 Grasping the War .................................................................................................. 37 2. ARNO DOSCH FLEUROT IN REVOLUTIONARY RUSSIA: AMERICAN RESPONSE TO THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION OF 1917 ............................... 45 Building Russian Democracy ............................................................................... 46 Russia Must Fight ................................................................................................. 56 Arno Dosch Fleurot and Bolshevism .................................................................... 64 3. THE AFTERMATH OF WORLD WAR ONE: THE COLLAPSE OF AMERICAN IDEALISM IN 1920S ..................................................................... 73 Disillusionment with the German Revolution ...................................................... 74 The Spread of Bolshevism .................................................................................... 79 The Postwar International System ........................................................................ 91 CONCLUSION .............................................................................................................. 104 BIBLIOGRAPHY .......................................................................................................... 117 iii 1 INTRODUCTION May be there won’t be war, though the Bolsheviks just will not let you live in peace in the same world with them. I have been trying to make this thought register for thirty-odd years, but people do not learn anything until it hits them.1 — Arno Dosch Fleurot Arno Dosch Fleurot, a veteran newspaperman, belonged to the generation of American foreign reporters who emerged during World War One. He came to Belgium with the first group of American correspondents in August 1914, and from then on one can describe his life as a series of thrilling adventures. Starting as a war reporter on the Western Front in 1914 he was transferred to Russia where he witnessed two Russian revolutions and the beginning of the Russian Civil War. When World War One was over, he could have returned to his native country, but he chose to stay in Europe. His long assignments alternated with short visits to the United States. Following major world events, Dosch Fleurot moved from country to country and became a true cosmopolitan and an expert in world politics. Dosch Fleurot was born in 1879, in Portland, Oregon, to a well-to-do family of first-generation immigrants. His father, Henry Ernst Dosch came to the United States from Mainz, a city in Western Germany. Shortly before the beginning of the American 1 Arno Dosch Fleurot (ADF) to Marcus (Marguerite Dosch Campbell), January 19, 1951. All letters are in possession of John Wilson Special Collections, Multnomah County Library, Portland, Oregon. 2 Civil War, he settled in St. Louis, a city with a big German community. When war broke out, Henry Dosch decided to join the Union army and enlisted in the cavalry service. After his discharge in 1863, he took the Oregon Trail and moved westward. He had tried different jobs before he settled in Portland, Oregon where he eventually became a successful merchant and horticulturist. In 1866, he married Marie Louise Fleurot, who was born in France and came to the United States as a little girl. Henry and Marie Dosch had ten children, four of which died in childhood.2 Dosch Fleurot graduated from Harvard Law School and could have become a lawyer. Instead, returning to his native city he decided to be a journalist. At first, the young writer tried himself in the newspaper business of his native city, first as a reporter for the Oregonian and as an editor of the Pacific Monthly. When the 1906 San Francisco earthquake happened, he was sent to the city as a correspondent of the Oregonian and decided to settle there. After the unsuccessful attempt to start an illustrated weekly, the East and West, he wrote for the San Francisco Call and the San Francisco Bulletin.3 In San Francisco, Dosch Fleurot met his first wife Elsie Sperry, who was helping in the soup kitchens after the earthquake. She was a girl from a prosperous California family, pretty 2 Fred Lockley, “Reminiscences of Colonel Henry Ernst Dosch,” The Quarterly of the Oregon Historical Society 25, no. 1 (March, 1924): 53-71; Sunday Oregonian, April 16, 1922, 6. 3 Harvard University, Secretary’s Second Report Harvard College Class 1904 (Cambridge: Crimson Printing Company, June 1910), 81. 3 and well-educated, spoke different languages and had taken several trips to Europe. Arno and Elsie married in January, 1908.4 By the time of his marriage, Dosch Fleurot had accumulated a big debt as a result of his failed venture with the publication the East and West. His father helped him repay a part of it, but he still owed some money. His marriage came with the understanding that now he should not be as reckless as he had been before. He wrote to his father: “Being married put it up to me every day not only to look out for the present but to plan into the future.”5 When Dosch Fleurot’s first daughter Betsy was born in March, 1909, it brought new responsibilities. In the search of new perspectives, he decided to move to New York. “Nothing of real advantage is open in this town [San Francisco] and I have acquired an idea that my talents need a lager field,” he wrote to his father.6 In New York, Dosch Fleurot gradually became a successful free-lance writer, but it was also the first time, he “had to do a good deal of hack-work, to keep the things going.” He recalled that once he had written “in less than three months . almost a quarter of a million words for the year-book of an encyclopedia.” Finally, he found more creative money-making opportunities writing muckraking stories and selling those to different magazines. Most often, he contributed to the Pearson’s and the World Works.7 4 Daphne Berenbach, Essay about Elsie Sperry Dosch-Fleurot. Courtesy of Middlebury College Special Collections and Archives, Middlebury, Vermont. 5ADF to Henry Ernst Dosch (HED), March 16, 1908. 6 ADF to HED, April 18, 1908. 7 Harvard University, Secretary’s Third Report Harvard College Class 1904 (Cambridge: Crimson Printing Company, June 1914), 138-139. 4 Coming to Europe at the beginning of World War One as a correspondent of the Worlds Work, Dosch Fleurot soon was hired by the New York World and continued with this newspaper as its foreign correspondent in different European countries until the paper folded in 1931. Most of the 1930s, he worked for William Randolph Hearst’s news corporation in Germany and France. He quit in 1937, amidst Hearst’s financial crisis. For a short period of time, he wrote for the New York Times, the New York Tribune and the Baltimore Sun until 1941, when he became