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Lot 45
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Warren Harding as Pres. TLS on Post-World War Fallout to "prevent all conflict in the Old World"
Warren Harding as Pres. TLS on Post-World War Fallout to "prevent all conflict in the Old World"
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Description:

Warren G. Harding
Washington, D.C., February 3, 1923
Warren Harding as Pres. TLS on Post-World War Fallout to "prevent all conflict in the Old World"
TLS
A typed letter signed by Warren Harding to the American Ambassador to France as Germany defaulted on reparations payments and Europe began its descent into another crisis. 1p, measuring 7" x 10.25", Washington, D.C., dated February 3, 1923. On White House stationery, signed "Warren G. Harding" and addressed to Myron Herrick at the U.S. Embassy in Paris. Marked "Personal", the letter highlights Harding's concerns about the American public's expectations towards Europe following the First World War. The letter has been tipped to another sheet. With a flattened mail fold. A few spots of foxing, else very fine. Boldly signed.

Reading in full:
"I had your very good letter addressed to me at holiday time, and now desire to make my grateful acknowledgement though it is very much belated. I fully appreciate the import of your feeling that the decisions recently made and which continue to be made in Western Europe are no less significant than those made at the front in 1918. We have been tremendously concerned over here. We have not only been anxious in maintaining a wholly proper attitude in our relation to the nations of Europe, but we have had a difficult time in satisfying an American public opinion which does not know precisely what it wants except that it feels that America can somehow wave a magic wand and prevent all conflict in the Old World. I am sure you know from the official communications which you receive that we are agreed to be helpful in every consistent way possible.

I thank you for your kindly references to the success of the administration. Please be assured that I have no apprehensions or worries about the political future. The main thing to be concerned about is the success of the four years to which I am committed and one-half of which has been written into the history of American administrations. Perhaps everything has not been done as it might have been. Undoubtedly there are many disappointments which have an unfavorable reflex in American public opinion, but looking back over the period now I do not know of any course I would materially change, and I have every confidence that the foreign policy of the government is going to be wholly vindicated."

Americans were weary after the experience of fighting World War I, and Warren Harding promised a "return to normalcy" in his 1921 inaugural address. Mustering industrial technologies into military service brought warfare to levels unimaginable a few decades earlier, and the war's casualties left a generation shattered. Soldiers returned with a cynicism from their tumultuous wartime experience, the Senate's failure to ratify the Peace of Versailles, and Woodrow Wilson's stroke and incapacitation all added to America's desires to return to the status quo antebellum. This goal remained elusive, because the United States had taken a leadership position in international relations from which it was impossible to withdraw.

Riding the wave of public support for disarmament after the war, Harding had been focusing on an international arms limitation conference during the first two years of his administration. From November 1921 to February 1922, Japan, China, France, Britain, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Portugal joined American diplomats at the Washington Arms Conference. It was the first disarmament conference in history, and the first time the United States hosted an international summit. By the time the meeting ended, it had produced three major treaties, including the Washington Naval Treaty, three smaller agreements, and twelve resolutions. The conference had the desired effect of maintaining peace and heading off a naval arms race between competing nations.

The financial crisis sparked by Germany's inability to meet the reparations schedule imposed by the Treaty of Versailles would again draw the United States into European affairs. For most of 1922, Germany protested the high payments imposed by the treaty. In March, Germany asserted that payments—in the form of money, natural resources, and manufactured goods—would equal almost three-quarters of their exports, thus crippling their economy. In May, citing money owed, France asked U.S. bankers to defer French debt payments. Two months later, however, the French refused a similar request from Germany. In September, fighting between Greece and Turkey split the Anglo-French alliance when France backed Turkey and the United States and Britain supported Greece. Then in December, the Reparations Commission declared Germany in default after failing to make a scheduled timber delivery. Further complicating relations between the former Allies, former French Prime Minister Georges "the Tiger" Clemenceau declared in a December speech in St. Louis that Americans would eventually need to return to Europe, warning "You had better take care it will not be too late."

The situation only deteriorated in January 1923, when French troops seized coal fields in Germany's industrial Ruhr Valley, attempting to force production and resume exports. The United States and Great Britain objected to taking reparations by force, and the U.S. Senate then blocked France's foreign aid. Moreover, strikes, demonstrations, and sabotage resulted from the French military action.

Harding was indeed correct in his assessment that the decisions being made in Europe in 1923 were as important as battlefield decisions made five years earlier. Failing to reign in the financial crisis led to worldwide depression and the rise of fascism throughout the late 1920s and 1930s. Moreover, the American public's expectations of magical problem-solving never went away, with simultaneous calls for both isolation and intervention reverberating for decades, right up to the attack on Pearl Harbor. Harding did the one thing he could to try and maintain peace: staying the course on naval disarmament.

This item comes with a Certificate from John Reznikoff, a premier authenticator for both major 3rd party authentication services, PSA and JSA (James Spence Authentications), as well as numerous auction houses.

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  • Dimensions: 7" x 10.25"
  • Medium: TLS

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