Dwight Morrow : Creative
Diplomatist
SALTER By SIR ARTHUR
in public life he was a delegate at International Conferences, an ambassador and a senator. But whether in private or Public office he achieved his results by a distinctive form of .creative diplomacy, which is a real contribution to the art of government. His personality and his technique constitute
the enduring importance of his life. •
He made his first real start in life as a " corporation laWyer,". a profession which in the opportunities it offers for .combining legal with administrative experience has no analogy in this country.. Some ten years later lie became a .Partner in J.1'. Morgan's, just as the Great War was beginning, and war-financing was giving that great firm a position of .Unexampled power in public affairs. He rendered invaluable service to the Supply Organisation in Europe in 1918.; and in this , peripd he developed from a ,national to an inter- Alational public servant., After the War he was one of the dozen or. so central personalities in the problems of post-War :finance (reparations, debts and reconstruction schemes). • In ;1925 President Coolidge gave him the difficult and apparently :tlLankless pnst of Afnbassader to Mexico. The transition from private to official life was now definite ; and his achievement in his first considerable public. office was immediate and sensa- tional. It was in Mexico that he perfected and most success- fully displayed his distinctive diplomatic technique. He not ,only settled, the apparently insoluble question of American Oil and land rights, but exceeding altogether the sphere of a foreign Ambassador, effected a conciliation between the Mexican Government and the Catholic Church. Morrow's next public service was at the London Naval Conference of 1930. And the considerable success of that Conference was Probably due more to Morrow than any other single delegate, and his distinctive qualities were never utilised to better advantage. Returning to America, he made a new departure —hesitantly and perhaps of doubtful wisdom—in entering the Senate. It might have proved successful—An time ; but time wl4s not, allowed. He reverted for a moment to a more familiar rdie in the financial crisis of 1931, when he was constantly con- sulted by Mr. Hoover, and he would have been head of the American Delegation to the Disarmament Conference of 1932, but he died suddenly and prematurely in October, 1931, at the age of fifty-eight. His career, thus barely summarised, was a remarkable one. Isis actual achievement, especially if we include the work for Which others obtained the credit, was far greater. But Morrow left the irresistible impression on all who knew him that he, was much greater than either his visible achievement or even the sum of specific qualities and talents that could be assigned to him. I think of him myself as one who, to a degree I have never seen equalled, became completely absorbed in the work of the moment, His manner, his mannerisms, and the absent-mindedness of which there are so many anecdotes, Were all a reflection of this concentration. I still see him as a short, stocky figure, with a lined face and visionary eyes, expressive alike of nobility and experienced wisdom, striding impatiently round the room with dishevelled clothes and dis- ordered hair ; stabbing the air with his pipe or littering the floor with cigarette stubs—indifferent to everything on earth except the idea he was trying to crystallise and express. He was a good talker and a good listener, but not, in my experi- ence, a good conversationalist, for his expository and receptive Moods were. successive rather than simultaneous ; when he
Dwight Morrow. By Harold Nicolson. (Constable. 18s.) Dwtoier Moanow was by profession a lawyer and a banker ; listened he did so without interruption and when lie talkedlo pursued his own train of thought.
. He had an intense, and in some respects an excessive, belief in the importance not only of the historical antecedents of a given problem, but the historical analogies to it in earlier ages. And while his gifts were those of a man of action, his deepest interests and ultimate values were those of a student. I remember arguing far into the night with him against an inclination to accept an academie position at a time when his influence on the current tasks of statesman- ship was of inestimable value. This disposition towards scholarship was an effective protection against those principal temptations of a man of action, and of rapidly accumulating wealth—opportunism, materialism and the worse form of ambition. Never was a man less, corrupted by riches or the vanities pf office, or less susceptible to facile temptations to short cuts and superficial solutions.
These personal qualities were the foundation of his diplo- matic method. In every negotiation lie always tried, more industriously and sympathetically than any diplomatist I have known, to understand the real interests and deepest preoccupations of all the parties ; and no technicality or com- plexity daunted him. To this end he brought not only an intense and unrelaxing industry, but a sympathetic insight ; and he deliberately assumed the honesty and good will of those with whom he dealt, and by so doing usually evoked the best they had of either. Lastly, he genuinely strove not for the triumph of one point of view, but for a constructive solution which would at the same time give the utmost possible satis- faction to the most vital interests of all parties, believing that a " hard bargain is always a bad bargain." There could be no better preparation for any career in which diplomacy, in the widest sense, is required than a study in detail of his life and method. Mr. Harold Nicolson, though neither a compatriot nor a colleague, has vividly and accurately described the career, the personality and the diplomatic technique of this great American. One of the most brilliant of living biographers,
/w he usually writes of men engaged in diplomacy and from the point of view of their personal contribution to diplomatic method. He Was thus pre-eminently qualified to understand and interpret the distinctive personality of Dwight Morrow and his specific work. He writes perhaps with a rather less sustained brilliance than when he has been drawing direct on his own memories. But the .general picture presented of MorrOw's personality and career is, I •think, both accurate and convincing, and the appreciation of his method of work is just and sound. Wherever any memory of my own is relevant it confirms Mr. Nicolson's account, with one doubtful exception. I wonder whether the account of Morrow's interview with Mr. Iloover in January, 1929, when he was not invited to be Secretary of State leaves exactly the right impression. Mr. Nicolson justly relates the .President-elect's relief that Morrow was willing to return to-lVlexica.• But did he say he thought it was his duty to do so' before he had been allowed •to under- 'stand Mr. Hoover's wishes ? saw hina' immediately after the- interview,- -and I doubt it. But I cannot • make any Confident assertion and in any ease it is certainly true, as Mr. Nicolson implies, that Morrow complied with what was evidently Mr. Hoover's wish cheerfully and- without protest or 'resentment—though perhaps not without 'same regrets.
This biography is worthy 'of ifs subject; and it Would be difficult to give higher praise.
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