Man of the Hour
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“a novel investigation”: Kistiakowsky, eulogy of JBC.
“the times”: MTR diary, fall–winter 1933, CFP.
“He is tense inside . . . ,” “Jim is so pessimistic . . .”: Ibid.
CHAPTER 9: UNEXPECTED TROUBLES
“To begin with . . .”: Louis Mertens, Robert Frost: Life and Talks-Walking, 241.
“This is an age of dictators . . .”: Brock, “Conant States His Creed for Harvard.”
“Age of Conant”: Halberstam, “James Bryant Conant: The Right Man.”
“a healthy clash of ideas”: DBG, June 22, 1934. JBC, “Free Inquiry or Dogma?” Atlantic Monthly, April 1935, 439.
“unexpected troubles”: MSL, 139.
“It will be a sad day . . .”: BH, BG, NYT, June 21 and 22, 1934. Harvard Alumni Bulletin 36 (July 6, 1934).
“Down with Hitler! . . . ,” “Fascist butchers!”: Ibid. JBC, Memorandum III, “Hitler Comes to Power,” 7, JBCPP, MSL, 41. Also see a detailed chronicle of Hanfstaengl at Harvard in William M. Tuttle Jr., “American Higher Education and the Nazis: The Case of James B. Conant and Harvard University’s ‘Diplomatic Relations’ with Germany,” American Studies 20, no. 1 (Spring 1979): 49–70 (hereafter Tuttle, “AHE and the Nazis”). Also John Sedgwick, “The Harvard Nazi,” Boston Magazine, March 2005.
“an immense, high-strung . . .”: William L. Shirer, Berlin Diary, 17.
“the man who has saved Germany . . .”: Harvard College class of 1909, TFAR, 277.
“The German Storm”: Tuttle, “AHE and the Nazis,” 55.
“greatest anticipation,” “flabbergasted”: NYT, March 29, 1934. HC, September 24, 1934.
“Dr. Hanfstaengl Scholarship,” “perennial love . . .”: Original letter in JBCPP.
“Beware of Nazis Bearing Gifts”: Smith, The Harvard Century, 118.
“has risen to distinguished station . . .”: HC, June 13, 1934.
“Hanfstaengl appeared large . . . ,” “I bring you greetings . . . ,” “My response was cold . . .”: JBC, “Hitler Comes to Power,” 7.
“To me the answer . . . ,” “Hitler’s henchmen . . . ,” “We are unwilling . . .”: MSL, 143–44.
“Bully for Harvard”: Smith, The Harvard Century, 119.
“Harvard Rebuffs Dr. Hanfstaengl . . .”: DBG, October 4, 1934.
“one of the finest pages . . .”: BH, October 5, 1934.
“so curt and caustic . . .”: HC, September 24, 1934.
“public relations problem”: TFAR, 166.
“translate the wild and whirling . . .”: Peter Conradi, “Opinion,” NYT, November 30, 2004.
“authentic voice . . .”: NYHT, May 19, 1933. Ronald Steel, Walter Lippmann and the American Century, 331.
“not alone in his reticence”: Tuttle, “AHE and the Nazis,” 66.
“danger of controversy”: MSL, 115.
“But as a university president . . .”: Tuttle, “AHE and the Nazis,” 66, 52.
“mix up charity and education . . .”: Ibid. JBC’s original letters to Grenville Clark, November 14, 1933, Harold Laski, November 3, 1933, and E. K. Bolton, September 13, 1933 are all in JBCPRESP, HUA.
“I have not seen many men . . . ,” “imported people . . .”: Tuttle, “AHE and the Nazis.”
“Our London representative . . .”: Morton Keller and Phyllis Keller, Making Harvard Modern, 155.
“certainly very definitely . . .”: Stephen H. Norwood, The Third Reich in the Ivory Tower, 39.
“rather against bringing . . .”: Keller, Making Harvard Modern, 155.
“I doubt if we can use him . . .”: Ibid.
“failure of compassion”: Tuttle, “AHE and the Nazis,” 54.
“beloved Law School”:
“We’re in a kind of a hole . . .”,“pathological case,” “insulting a friendly government . . . ,” “If I were not President . . .”: Hershberg, Harvard to Hiroshima, 87.
“significant contribution”: JBC, “Hitler Comes to Power,” 11.
“not very pleasant,” “new order”: MSL, 143.
“I’m not in it . . .”: Boston Transcript, September 17, 1933. JBC, “Hitler Comes to Power,” 5.
“open to their approaches?”: MSL, 143.
“judgment on the Nazis”: Ibid.
“In at least two foreign countries . . .”: JBC, “Free Inquiry or Dogma?” 436–42.
“The suppression of academic freedom . . . ,” “spirit of inquiry . . .”: JBC, School and Society 42 (July 13, 1935): 41. “Harvard Present and Future,” Harvard Alumni Bulletin 38 (April 10, 1936).
“the case for a sharp refusal . . . ,” “Even if one despised . . .”: MSL, 146.
“ancient ties”: HC, March 3, 1936.
“shower of abuse,” “weighed the pros and cons,” “strongly anti-Nazi,” “No one seemed to remember . . .”: MSL, 146.
“perhaps too gentle”: Keller, Making Harvard Modern, 157.
“Weltanschauung,” “pronounced a lot of nonsense . . .”: Ibid.
“What my views would have been . . .”: Tuttle, “AHE and the Nazis,” 72–74.
“endeavor”: Ibid.
“diplomatic relations,” “the dilemma of those abroad . . . ,” “a friendly act . . .”: JBC, “Tenth Anniversary of Amerikahaus in Munich,” State Department Bulletin 34 (February 27, 1956).
“barbarity”: MSL, 213.
“dangerous follies”: Ibid., 434.
“traitor to his class,” “rancorous and almost hysterical . . .”: John T. Bethell, “Frank Roosevelt at Harvard,” Harvard Magazine, November–December 1996.
“This country is being run . . .”: Ibid.
“quizzed . . . ,”: Smith, The Harvard Century, 126.
“worthwhile experiment”: Halberstam, “James Bryant Conant: The Right Man.”
“A public servant . . .”: HC, June 12, 1935.
steady procession of Harvard visitors: Bethell, “Frank Roosevelt at Harvard.”
“We appear to be entering . . .”: JBC, President’s Report, 1934–35, 8, PBCPP. Amster, “Meritocracy Ascendant,” 87.
“The presence or absence . . .”: Ibid.
“academic New Deal . . .”: Brock, “Training Leaders: A Test for Colleges,” NYT Magazine, June 16, 1934, 15.
“less than pleased”: MSL, 153.
“stump speech”: JBC to A. Lawrence Lowell, March 9, 1936, JBCPRESP, HUA.
“Having to introduce a man . . .”: MSL, 153.
“Mr. Franklin D. Roosevelt . . . ,” “about ten minutes . . .”: Bethell, “Frank Roosevelt at Harvard.”
“which was that of a schoolmaster . . .”: MSL, 153.
“Damn”: Bethell, “Frank Roosevelt at Harvard.”
“very bad politics . . .”: JBC to A. Lawrence Lowell, March 12, 1936, JBCPRESP, HUA.
“ca’m jedgment,” “incredible among cultured men . . .”: Bethell, “Frank Roosevelt at Harvard.”
“increasing suspicion . . .”: MSL, 448.
“Red professors,” “disloyal to our American ideals,” “Raw Deal”: Milton Mayer, Robert Maynard Hutchins: A Memoir (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 147–49.
“hot beds of radicalism”: NYT, January 20, 1935.
“It is being said . . . ,” “we must also have . . .”: JBC, “Free Inquiry or Dogma?”
“kind of academic declaration . . .”: NYT, January 20, 1935.
“more militant”: NYT, March 9, 1935.
“hopeless,” “Take Oath or Quit”: MSL, 451–52.
“It is out of the question . . . ,” “dunking his promising defense . . .”: Ibid.
“obnoxious law”: Ibid.
“dangerous precedent”: Ibid.
“This is admittedly a time . . .”: JBC, “The Endowed University in American Life,” March 20, 1936, JBCPP.
“first step in the same direction . . .”: Amster, “Meritocracy Ascendant,” 107.
“black shadows surrounded . . .”: MSL, 151.
“the equivalent of an inaugural add
ress”: MSL, 149.
“Early History of Harvard”: “Harvard’s James B. Conant,” Time 28 (September 28, 1936): 23.
“Such a gathering as this . . .”: JBC’s tercentenary oration is reprinted in MSL, 651–58.
“a wave of anti-intellectualism . . .”: MSL, 651.
“alumni were sorely troubled . . .”: Bethell, “Frank Roosevelt at Harvard.”
“As proud as he might be . . .”: “Harvard’s James B. Conant,” Time 28 (September 28, 1936): 26.
“Conant’s way of soaking the rich . . .”: Ibid., 24.
“President of Harvard . . to do his will,” “own innovation”: Pringle, “Profiles: Mr. President,” pt. 2, 24–25.
“polling the jury”: Ibid.
“up or out”: Amster, “Meritocracy Ascendant,” 97.
“the modern equivalents . . . ,” “I told Conant once . . .”: Mertens, Robert Frost, 241.
“full of petty malice”: Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., A Life in the Twentieth Century, 122.
“slide-rule administrator”: Douglass, Six upon the World, 366; Halberstam, “James Bryant Conant: The Right Man.”
“waves of criticism . . .”: Pringle, “Profiles: Mr. President,” pt. 2, 25.
“cruel necessity”: Brock, “Conant States His Creed for Harvard.”
CHAPTER 10: THE ACID TEST
“A laboratory is not the ideal . . .”: Irwin Ross, “The Tempest at Harvard,” Harper’s 81 (October 1940): 549.
“sop”: GRC diary, winter 1936–1937, CFP.
“make the best of a bad prospect,” “walking uphill”: MSL, 195–98.
“excellent condition”: Ibid.
“internal wrestling match . . . ,” “The twenty-four hours . . .”: Ibid.
“collective security”: For FDR’s policy of collective action, see Barbara Rearden Farnham, Roosevelt and the Munich Crisis: A Study of Political Decision-Making (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997), 60–65.
“By the horror . . .”: JBC, “When May a Man Dare to Be Alone?”
“hatreds of the moment,” “welter of words . . .”: Ibid.
“The acid test . . .”: JBC, “Addresses to Harvard Freshmen,” Harvard Alumni Bulletin 1 (September 28, 1934).
“gangster rule,” “armed aggression,” “man on the street”: MSL, 212–13.
“not only bitterness . . .”: Shaplen, “Sabbatical.”
“quarantine the aggressors”: Farnham, Roosevelt and the Munich Crisis, 65.
“boil to the surface”: MSL, 209.
“I was neither an isolationist . . .”: Ibid.
“make the world safe . . .”: JBC, “Education and Peace,” June, 18, 1938, JBCPP.
“I believe it is easy . . . ,” “I do not believe . . . ,” “war to end war”: JBC to Archibald MacLeish, June 18, 1937, Archibald MacLeish Papers, LOC.
“poisoned”: MSL, 218.
“Lion from Idaho”: Joseph Martin Hernon, Profiles in Character: Hubris and Heroism in the U.S. Senate, 1789–1996 (New York: Routledge, 2016).
“I am beginning to think . . .”: JBC to Walter Lippmann, August 12, 1938, Lippmann papers, YU.
“criminal error”: MSL, 213.
“the problem of evil . . .”: JBC, Chapel Address, October 1938.
“cause of stopping Hitler . . . I was tortured”: MSL, 212–13.
“barbaric spirit of the German government . . .”: School and Society 48 (November 26, 1938): 678.
“struck a note of fear . . .”: JBC, “Hitler Comes to Power,” 10.
“We went to Conant’s office . . . ,” “dollar for dollar”: Harvard Magazine, September–October 2006. Also JBC, “Hitler Comes to Power,” 10.
“the humanitarian basis of democracy . . . ,” “appreciate greatly . . .”: Ibid.
“Committee on Scientific Aids . . .”: Vannevar Bush, Pieces of the Action, 32 (henceforth POTA).
“With Munich fresh . . .”: TFAR, 164.
“No,” Compton told him: Tuttle, “James B. Conant,” 86.
“[It] seems to me . . .”: JBC to Archibald MacLeish, September 7, 1939, Archibald MacLeish Papers, LOC.
“cash and carry”: MSL, 215.
“The paramount issue . . .”: Tuttle, “James B. Conant,” 90.
“silver-tongued orators”: Beatrice Bishop Berle and Travis Beal Jacobs, eds., Navigating the Rapids, 1918–1971: From the Papers of Adolfe A. Berle (New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1973), 258.
“one-man minor operation . . .”: MSL, 213.
“earning an unenviable place . . .”: MSL, 214.
“strongly in favor of repeal . . .”: Tuttle, “James B. Conant,” 93, 97.
“pulled their punches”: MSL, 215.
“phony war”: Hernon, Profiles in Character, 157.
“Nobody could be sure . . .”: MSL, 215.
“almost revolutionary force”: Ibid.
“Resignations are threatened . . .”: Harvard Progressive, October 1939. “To Save Harvard,” Time, October 16, 1939, 68.
“I feel quite as though war . . .”: Hershberg, Harvard to Hiroshima, 117.
“crack research men”: “To Save Harvard.”
“solely on grounds . . . ,” Magna Charta: Time, June 5, 1939, 36.
“no choice”: MSL, 163.
“the Leverett House gang”: Smith, The Harvard Century, 135.
“stubborn streak”: Smith, The Harvard Century, 133.
Magna Charta, “flexibility”: Ross, “The Tempest at Harvard,” 547. For a full description of the whole Walsh-Sweezy affair, see 544–52.
“Mirror, mirror,” “A laboratory is not the ideal . . .”: Ibid., 548–49.
“slap in the face”: MSL, 170.
“you could have heard . . .”: Smith, The Harvard Century, 137.
“knockdown fight,” “I had no stomach for apologizing”: MSL, 169–70.
“sounded unanimous”: Ibid.
“close to being vindictive”: Ibid.
“An accumulation of prejudices . . .”: Ibid.
“We saw so little of him . . .”: Interview with Theodore R. Conant.
“soft”: Ibid.
“soothing holidays”: JBC to GRC, summer 1938, CFP.
“children should be seen . . .”: Interview with Theodore R. Conant.
“little savages,” “I seem to have to ask . . .”: GRC to MTR, September 1, 1940, CFP.
“a Goody Two-shoes”: Interview with Theodore R. Conant.
“extremely repressed”: GRC diary, February 6, 1937, CFP.
“reserved, conscientious . . .”: GRC diary, May 17, 1938.
“disastrous,” “Ted is so far from . . .”: GRC to Marjorie Conant, February 20, 1933, CFP.
“tool of Wall Street”: Interview with Theodore R. Conant.
“Commie”: DBG, April 14, 1938.
“bad for business,” “horror of the housekeeper . . .”: Interview with Theodore R. Conant.
“Lord Haw-Haw,” “all over the Yard . . .”: MTR diary, May 1940, CFP.
“Hitler’s favorites,” Germany Calling: Interview with Theodore R. Conant.
“Ted has been living . . .”: GRC diary, February 25, 1939, CFP.
“inferiority complex”: GRC to MTR, 1941, CFP.
“quackery”: Interview with Theodore R. Conant.
“intense and continuous solicitude . . . ,” “spoiled imp”: JBC diary, January 15, 1940, JBCPP. The entry, written in pencil in GRC’s handwriting, had been erased but is legible.
“conflict of claims”: GRC diary, April 15, 1936, CFP.
“checking up . . .”: GRC diary, November 16, 1935.
“You have definitely changed . . .”: GRC diary, April 15, 1936.
“I think none the less . . .”: MTR diary, torn page, undated, CFP.
“mean machine,” “struggle”: GRC diary, September 9, 1938, CFP.
“relapsed,” “spell of the vapors . . .”: GRC diary, February 6, 1937.
“entirely negative . . . ,” “unworthy, se
lfish . . .”: GRC diary entries covering the years 1936–1938, CFP.
“never come back,” “There’s poison in my will . . . ,” “I inject a little bit . . .”: GRC diary, July 19, 1938.
“vicarious pleasure,” “rosier than they have seemed”: JBC to GRC, July 7 and 28, 1938, CFP.
“plateau of contentment,” “emotional indigestion”: JBC to GRC, February 27 and August 29, 1934.
“The war engulfed all of us . . .”: MSL, 203.
CHAPTER 11: A PRIVATE CITIZEN SPEAKS OUT
“It is not too late . . .”: JBC, “Immediate Aid to Allies,” May 29, 1940, Speaking as a Private Citizen: Addresses on the Present Threat to Our Nation’s Future (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1941).
“W. T. Richards Ends Life . . .”: NYT, January 31, 1940.
“family only”: JBC diary, February 2, 1940, JBCPP.
“died by his own hand”: “William Theodore Richards,” Memorial, Vicennial Report of the class of 1921, Harvard College.
“real progress toward restored health . . . ,” “at once accepted it”: MTR letter, with instructions it be sent out to “intimate friends,” undated 1940, CFP.
“a card at the Athenæum . . . ,” “a fatal flaw . . .”: Interview with Theodore R. Conant.
“beyond any doubt . . .”: “William Theodore Richards,” Memorial, Vicennial Report.
“died of an overdose . . .”: MTR letter to be sent to “intimate friends:” MTR letter, undated 1940, CFP.
“They thought Bill was a bit gaga . . .”: Interview with Martha “Muffy” Henderson Coolidge.
Howard M. Ward: Willard Rich, Brain-Waves and Death.
“brazen hussy”: Ibid.
“steamed up”: JBC to EOL, May 30, 1940, JBCPP.
“A ton of uranium . . .”: Willard Rich, “The Uranium Bomb,” unpublished manuscript, CFP.
“To make a uranium bomb . . .”: Ibid.
“play down”: McGeorge Bundy, Danger and Survival, 34 (henceforth DAS).
“extremely powerful bombs . . .”: Ibid., 35–36.
“revolutionize civilization”: Rich, “The Uranium Bomb.”
“great nose for unusual news,”: MSL, 299.
“outlandish,” “no better than”: Interview with Theodore R. Conant.
“I conceded the argument . . .”: Ibid.
“without pause or interruption,” “now at hand . . .”: JBC, “Humanity’s Experiment with Free Institutions,” September 26, 1939, JBCPP.