Our Finest Hour
Reviewed by Chris Manion
The Wall Street Journal
June 11, 1993

Three years ago on these pages, Arthur Schlesinger Jr. argued that the changes in Eastern Europe had vindicated FDR. "in the short run, Stalin gained. But statesmanship is tested by the long run," he wrote. "Now, 45 years later, the Soviet Union is at last honoring the Yalta agreements." Roosevelt to him was a "virtuoso politician" who did well in trying to "outwit" Stalin, and he invoked Walter Lippmann who once wrote, "Roosevelt was too cynical a man to think he could charm Stalin."

In a new history of appeasement from Munich to Yalta, "Spheres of Influence" (Ivan R. Dee, 318 pages, $28.50), Lloyd C. Gardner attempts to keep such old myths of prescient leadership alive, but actually lays them to rest.

Mr. Gardner, a historian at Rutgers, presents an account of diplomatic conversations so shorn of historical context that one almost forgets that a war is going on. As a collection of conversations, however, his book is meticulous, lifeless, exhaustive, and also stunningly revealing as an account of Chamberlain's relationship with Hitler, and Roosevelt's with Stalin.

In both cases, vanity abounds. In 1938 Chamberlain writes that he has impressed Hitler: "He liked the rapidity with which I grasped the essentials.... I got the impression that here was a man that could be relied upon when he had given his word." (Hitler, in fact, had this to say about the spry prime minister: "Mr. Chamberlain is such a nice old man, and I have signed so many photographs and books, that I thought I would give him my signature as a pleasant souvenir.")

Roosevelt, for his part, upbraids Churchill in L942: "I think I can personally handle Stalin better than your Foreign Office or my State Department. Stalin hates the guts of all your top people. He thinks he likes me better and I hope he will continue to do so." But, of course, Roosevelt at Yalta fared no better than Chamberlain in Munich, though Mr. Gardner shrugs off the results, saying "it could have been worse."

Without intending to, Mr. Gardner confirms Paul Johnson's conclusion in "Modem Times" - that there was an incorrigible element of frivolity in Roosevelt's handling of foreign policy right up to his death in 1945.

By contrast there was nothing casual about Will Clayton, an unsung wartime hero  without a naive bone in his body. Clayton can be considered (as Newsweek once did) "the principal architect of American postwar foreign policy" and Gregory Fossedal. a former member of this paper's editorial staff and now a Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution, has provided a fine account of his life in "Our Finest Hour" (Hoover Institution Press, 349 pages, $34.95).

As a Washington insider, Clayton ran against the grain: he went to work at the age of 15 to
support his family, made a fortune in cotton, became head of the wartime Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC), actually turned down President Truman's offer to be Secretary of State, and left Washington when he considered his work to be finished. He assiduously avoided publicity and left no memoir: a most unusual man in any age.

Clayton was a man of adamantine character and profound common sense. When his cotton
competitors complained to Washington about his attempt to free up the market, he emanded congressional hearings (which were not pre-orchestrated dog-and-pony shows in those days). Ultimately he convinced the Congress to write his initiatives into law. Later, in another turf battle as RFC chairman, Clayton prevailed on FDR to drop Wallace from the Democratic ticket in favor of Harry Truman.

Clayton's origins in Tupelo, Miss., were every bit as humble as those of "the man from Hope," but provided Clayton with an entirely different road map. A man who knew markets intimately, he endorsed free trade as the "road to peace." Washington players thought his genius indispensable, but he remained faithful, first and always, to his wife, whom FDR once had to write for permission to keep Clayton from leaving town. The praise that his associates bestowed upon his character and abilities rings of another, less cynical time.

Clayton soared as America's lead negotiator on the financial institutions growing out of the
Bretton Woods Conference - the IMF, today's World Bank, and the GATT. The eighth grade dropout became close friends with the highbrow Lord Keynes, Britain's representative. His most memorable contribution was drafting the famous Harvard commencement speech Marshall gave on June 5, 1947, which announced the Marshall plan that largely rebuilt Europe. One finishes this readable history, depressed even more than ever by the nagging question: where are the selfless, optimistic, honorable and patriotic Claytons of today?
 

- Mr. Manion, a Senior Fellow at the American Foreign Policy Council in McLean, Va., was on the staff of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee from 1981-1989.