AS WELLES SAW IT
Neumann, William L.
As Welles Saw It SEVEN DECISIONS THAT SHAPED HISTORY, by Sumner Welles. Harper & Brothers. 236 pp. $3. Reviewed by William L. Neumann SINCE his resignation from the Department of State in the...
...In discussing wartime diplomacy, the decision to postpone the major territorial and political settlements until the end of the war is presented as largely responsible for the present tension between the U.S...
...He attacks the idea of German rearmament but favors "a partial rearmament" of Japan...
...While such a simple method of calculation may find favor with some Roosevelt supporters, this technique will be coldly received by others, particularly those who have believed that they have been carrying on the Roosevelt policies since 1945...
...The Combined Chiefs of Staff are made the scapegoats for Yalta, since it was this body which advised the President that the war would continue against Japan for many months and that Russian aid would be necessary...
...Therefore Welles proclaims his intention to tell "the unvarnished truth" about American decisions...
...He agrees, nevertheless, that Roosevelt can not be relieved of responsibility for the policies which led to Pearl Harbor although he offers the qualification that these were not the policies which Roosevelt would have followed had he been given a free hand by the American people...
...The United States should keep Formosa, ceding it only to a UN-recognized Chinese government which would agree to the establishment of UN air and naval bases on the island...
...Welles will undoubtedly rank as one of our ablest diplomats, particularly in dealings with Latin America, but his personalized version of how we got where we are today and why is far from being a penetrating analysis...
...His latest book has a different motivation...
...II Although the former Under Secretary of State remains throughout his narrative as a man blessed by infallibility, some grasp of his judgment can be made by looking at his closing recommendations for current American policy...
...Truman's decision in defiance of the repeated requests of Churchill for keeping the troops strategically stationed...
...While favoring the Marshall and Schuman plans, Welles also supports the Atlantic Pact and the containment theory...
...As he states in the preface, it is written out of fear that the record of President Roosevelt's handling of foreign affairs will be permanently distorted by the critics...
...Reviewed by William L. Neumann SINCE his resignation from the Department of State in the fall of 1943, Sumner Welles has devoted himself by means of the radio, a newspaper column, and several books to educating Americans in behalf of what he has considered wisdom in foreign policy...
...and the U.S.S.R...
...In reviewing the decisions which led to Pearl Harbor, Welles points up the extent to which Roosevelt's attitude towards Japan was shaped by the early life of his mother in China and by the tales he heard from her in childhood about her father's activities in the China trade...
...No one paused to ask the value of victory without prospects of continued peace among the victors...
...The first big blunder in American policy was not Yalta, but the withdrawal of American forces from Czechoslovakia and from advanced positions in Germany in May of 1945...
...This action, Welles believes, was Mr...
...Taking what he considers to be the seven major decisions of the Roosevelt Administration in the field of foreign affairs, Welles tends to give Roosevelt—and himself—credit for all the right decisions and to blame others for all the mistakes...
...Although this decision was Roosevelt's, Welles stresses that it was made under the advice of Hull, Churchill, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and other White House advisers—other than Welles—all of whom believed that nothing should be allowed to stand in the way of winning the war...
...Since none of Welles' policy suggestions are entirely new nor particularly promising as a way out of one of the greatest crises in American history, the reader of Seven Decisions That Shaped History might also question his earlier record...
...Welles seems no longer to believe in the utility of the Chiang Kai-shek forces, but he favors the UN recognition of Communist China only on terms which would be unacceptable to any but a government of a defeated and devastated country...
...Fear is not, unfortunately, the best of motivations for achieving such an end, and as a historian Welles rates low in objectivity...
...Hull and Byrnes are blamed in general for their intellectual limitations and ignorance of the basic realities of diplomacy, while Marshall is attacked for his failure in 1946 to give all-out support to Chiang Kai-shek...
...Because of this reaction, Welles charges that the American people lost their best chance to avoid war with Japan...
...Roosevelt's October 1937 "quarantine" speech, by provoking what Welles calls "a new wave of extreme isolationism," convinced the President that his plan must be dropped...
...Secretary of State Hull and his two successors, James Byrnes and George Marshall, receive scathing criticism for their mistakes while the present Secretary, Dean Ache-son, rates no mention for his own program...
...Welles is on sounder ground when he states that Russia had been a Pacific power for many decades and could be expected to stand firm at least on the return of the territory lost to Japan in 1905...
...The additional concessions made to the Russians in the Far East would have meant little, says Welles, if the U. S. had supported a strong China under Chiang Kai-shek...
...Welles also reveals that as early as the summer of 1937 Roosevelt was thinking of establishing a naval blockade around Japan's coasts, a problem in logistics which naval strategists considered incapable of solution and which would likely have resulted in war...
Vol. 15 • June 1951 • No. 6
