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The Status of Politics 1909–1919: The New Republic, Randolph Bourne and Van Wyck Brooks

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 January 2009

Paul F. Bourke
Paul F. Bourke
Affiliation:
Flinders University of South Australia
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Extract

We have learned recently from the work of a number of historians that the process of national mobilisation and the erection of unprecedented controls over industry during World War I offered to important groups of American liberals models for permanent collectivist reform and institutional renewal. The ease with which such controls were dismantled ought not to obscure the remarkable attraction they appeared to have in 1917 and 1918. It is clear that agencies such as the War Industries Board, the Railroad Administration, the War Labor Board, the Inquiry, and the National Board for Historical Service attracted not only the wartime enthusiasm of intellectuals; these agencies were seen to contain potential for peacetime use.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of American Studies , Volume 8 , Issue 2 , August 1974 , pp. 171 - 202
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1974

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References

1 Recent work on the social and intellectual history of America during the First World War includes Hirschfeld, Charles, ‘Nationalist Progressivism and World War I’, Mid-America, 45 (1963), 139–56Google Scholar, and ‘The Transformation of American Life’, in World War I, ed. Roth, Jack J. (New York, 1967)Google Scholar; Davis, Alan F., ‘Welfare, Reform and World War I’, American Quarterly, 19 (1967), 516–33CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Leuchtenberg, William, ‘The New Deal and the Analogue of War’, in Change and Continuity in Twentieth Century America, eds. Braeman, John, Bremner, Robert, Walters, Everett (Columbus, Ohio, 1964), pp. 81–143Google Scholar; Gelfand, Lawrence, The Inquiry (New Haven, 1963)Google Scholar; Haber, Samuel, Efficiency and Uplift: Scientific Management in the Progressive Era, 1890–1920 (Chicago, 1964)Google Scholar; Lasch, Christopher, The New Radicalism in America, 1889–1963 (New York, 1964)Google Scholar; Cywar, Alan, ‘John Dewey: Toward Domestic Reconstruction 1915–1920’, Journal of the History of Ideas, 30 (1969), 385–400CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Josephson, Harold, ‘History for Victory’, Mid-America, 50 (1970), 205–24.Google Scholar

2 The New Republic, Supplement ‘Labor and the New Social Order’, 14 (16 February 1918)Google Scholar. For a study of the Fabian background to this document, see McBriar, Alan M., Fabian Socialism and English Politics (Cambridge, 1962)Google Scholar. Wartime planning in England is discussed in various works by Marwick, Arthur: The Deluge, British Society and the First World War (London, 1965)Google Scholar, ‘The Impact of the First World War’, Journal of Contemporary History, 3 (1969), 51–63Google Scholar. See also Abrams, Philip, ‘The Failure of Social Reform 1918–1920’, Past and Present, 14 (1965), 43–65Google Scholar; Johnson, Paul, Land Fit for Heroes (Chicago, 1968)Google Scholar and Armitage, Susan, The Politics of Decontrol of Industry; Britain and the United States (London, 1969).Google Scholar

3 Leuchtenberg, , ‘The New Deal and the Analogue of War’, p. 143.Google Scholar

4 McKitrick, Eric, ‘Review: George Fredrickson, The Inner Civil War’, The New York Review of Books (9 06 1966), pp. 6–7.Google Scholar

5 Angell, Norman, The British Revolution and American Democracy (New York, 1919), p. 45Google Scholar and generally Chaps. 1 and 2.

6 Ibid., p. 3.

7 The New Republic, Supplement, 14 (16 February 1918), Foreword.Google Scholar

8 Ibid.

9 Abrams, , ‘The Failure of Social Reform 1918–1920’Google Scholar, offers an excellent discussion of these points.

10 Gompers's phrase was used in the course of an address on ‘Labour and the New Social Order ’. See Pelling, Henry, America and the British Left (London, 1956), p. 128Google Scholar. Beatrice Webb was amused by the New Republic's enthusiasm over ‘Labour and the New Social Order’, and by the editorial's reading of contemporary English politics: ‘I can see Sidney sitting down early last July to draft the memorandum on War Aims, and early in October to draft Labour and the New Social Order – exactly as he sits down morning after morning to draft memoranda, articles, reports and chapters of books, or corrects the manuscript of some humble author, quite oblivious of the fact that he was a man of destiny …’ Webb, Beatrice, Unpublished Diaries, 34 (1 April 1918), 113–6Google Scholar, Passfield Papers, London School of Economics (I am indebted to Mr Jay Winter of the Hebrew University for sharing with me his work in the Webb Diaries.)

11 There is now an excellent literature on the New Republic group, particularly Forcey, Charles, The Crossroads of Liberalism (New York, 1960)Google Scholar. Although the emphasis in this essay is different from Forcey's, it has not been my intention to ‘revise’ his or other accounts. Forcey's work was primarily an investigation of the nature and consequences of the New Republic's links with the decision-makers, an important question which he has answered very effectively. He was not particularly concerned, however, with the issue considered here: the character of the New Republic's political rhetoric and its relationship to the domestic expectations of the New Republic group once the country was at war. The one work which does bear explicitly on this – Lasch, The New Radicalism in America – is discussed separately in the pages that follow. For a different version of the significance of Fabianism for American intellectuals in the pre-war period, see McNaught, Kenneth, ‘American Progressives and the Great Society’, Journal of American History, 53 (1966), 504–20CrossRefGoogle Scholar. McNaught's argument that men like Walter Lippmann identified with the Fabians is misleading. McNaught uses as evidence the Lippmann-Graham Wallas correspondence without making clear that Wallas had resigned from the Fabian Society some years before Lippmann met him and that his significance for Lippmann was related to the fact that he was no longer a Fabian.

12 Forcey, , The Crossroads of LiberalismGoogle Scholar, discusses the reception of Croly's work and the claims that have been made for its influence.

13 Croly, Herbert to Frank, Waldo, 25 October 1927, Waldo Frank Papers, University of Pennsylvania Library.Google Scholar

14 Croly, Herbert, The Promise of American Life (New York, 1909)Google Scholar. These observations depend on a reading of Croly's entire argument but there are many specific passages where Croly makes it clear that he should be understood as discussing particular institutional and political reforms only as illustrations or signs of public spirit. See pp. 315–6, 331, 333, 339, 381. This is nowhere more explicit than in a striking passage which anticipates the criticisms he levelled at his book in 1927: ‘The sort of institutional and economic re-organisation suggested in the preceding chapters is not consequently to be conceived mainly as a more or less dubious proposal to improve human nature by laws. It is to be conceived as (possibly) the next step in the realisation of a necessary national collective purpose. Its deeper significance does not consist in the results which it may accomplish by way of immediate improvement. Such results may be worth having but at best they will create as many difficulties as they remove. Far more important than any practical benefits would be the indication it afforded of national good faith’. p. 405.

15 Ibid., pp. 397–8.

16 Mrs Webb's remark is quoted in McBriar, , Fabian Socialism and English Politics, p. 50.Google Scholar

17 Croly, , The Promise of American Life, p. 398.Google Scholar

18 Ibid., p. 446.

19 Brooks, Van Wyck, Scenes and Portraits: Memories of Childhood and Youth (New York, 1954), p. 214Google Scholar. Brooks recalled the same episode without mentioning Lippmann, by name in America's Coming of Age (New York, 1915), pp. 74–5.Google Scholar

20 Lippman, Walter, A Preface to Politics (New York, 1913), p. vi.Google Scholar

21 Ibid., pp. 97–8, 99, 68.

22 Ibid., pp. 70–71.

23 For the relationship of Wallas, Shaw and Wells to the Fabian Society, see McBriar, , Fabian Socialism and English PoliticsGoogle Scholar, and Thompson, Paul, Socialists, Liberals and Labour: The Struggle for London, 1885–1914 (London, 1967).Google Scholar

24 Pinchot, Amos, ‘A Communication’, The New Republic, 3 (29 05 1915), 95.Google Scholar

25 Ibid., p. 96.

26 Ibid., p. 97.

27 Robinson, James Harvey, ‘A Journal of Opinion’, The New Republic, 3 (8 05 1915), 9–11.Google Scholar

28 Bourne, Randolph, ‘What is Opinion’, The New Republic, 4 (18 09 1915), 171–2Google Scholar. (Unsigned editorial identified in Bourne, RandolphMSS. Diary, Columbia University Library.)Google Scholar

29 ‘Editorial’, The New Republic, 7 (24 June 1916), 181–2.Google Scholar

30 Wallas, Graham, ‘Socialism and the Fabian Society’, The New Republic, 7 (24 06 1916), 203–4.Google Scholar

31 Croly, Herbert to Bourne, Randolph, 15 September 1914, Bourne PapersGoogle Scholar. See also Croly, Herbert to Lowell, Amy, 12 December 1914, 11 June 1915, Amy Lowell PapersGoogle Scholar, Houghton Library, Harvard University.

32 Lasch, , The New Radicalism in America, p. xiv.Google Scholar

33 For an extended version of this criticism, see McNaught, ‘American Progressives and the Great Society’.

34 Straight, Willard to Croly, Herbert, 1 March 1915, Willard Straight Papers, Cornell University Library.Google Scholar

35 ‘Morale’, The New Republic, 10 (21 April 1917), 337–8Google Scholar. For the New Republic's analysis of wartime controls and general optimism about the domestic potential of the war, see: ‘In the Next Four Years’, 10 (3 March 1917), 123–4Google Scholar; ‘Editorial’, 10 (31 March 1917), 243Google Scholar; ‘A War Program for Liberals’, 10 (31 March 1917), 249–50Google Scholar: ‘Who Willed American Participation’, 10 (14 April 1917), 308–10Google Scholar; ‘Public Opinion and the War’, 10 (21 April 1917), 334–6Google Scholar; ‘Editorial’, 10 (28 April 1917), 358Google Scholar; Richberg, Donald, ‘The Democratisation of Industry’, 11 (12 May 1917), 49Google Scholar; Merz, Charles, ‘The War as Pretext’, 11 (2 June 1917), 129–30Google Scholar; ‘Food and the Future’, 11 (28 July 1917), 348Google Scholar; ‘After the War Reaction or Reconstruction’, 13 (19 January 1918), 331–3Google Scholar; Soule, George, ‘Instead of Revolution’, 14 (2 March 1918), 142–4Google Scholar; see also John Dewey's wartime articles, many of them for The New Republic, collected in Characters and Events (New York, 1929), vol. 2Google Scholar. See also Hirschfeld, , ‘Nationalist Progressivism and World War I ’Google Scholar, and Cywar, ,‘John Dewey: Toward Domestic Reconstruction 1915–1920’.Google Scholar

36 Croly, Herbert, ‘Counsel of Humility’, The New Republic, 13 (15 12 1917), 173–6Google Scholar. Forcey, , The Crossroads of Liberalism, p. 282Google Scholar, attributes to Croly the position of his English correspondent which Croly was summarizing at length before offering a commentary on it.

37 ‘Morale’, The New Republic, 10 (21 April 1917), 337.Google Scholar

38 The character of America's war aims has been explored in Levin, N. Gordon, Woodrow Wilson and World Politics (New York, 1968)Google Scholar; Mayer, Arno, Political Origins of the New Diplomacy (New Haven, 1959)Google Scholar and Politics and Diplomacy of Peacemaking (New York, 1967)Google Scholar; Lasch, Christopher, The American Liberals and the Russian Revolution (New York, 1962)Google Scholar. Of these and other works, Mayer's two volumes are especially helpful in setting America's war aims in comparative perspective.

39 Bourne, Randolph, Untimely Papers, ed. Oppenheim, James (New York, 1919), p. iv.Google Scholar

40 Mumford, Lewis, ‘The Image of Randolph Bourne’, The New Republic, 44 (24 09 1930) 151–2Google Scholar. Beringause, A., ‘The Double Martyrdom of Randolph Bourne’, Journal of the History of Ideas, 18 (1957), 594–603CrossRefGoogle Scholar, discusses the varying responses to Bourne's career and writings.

41 Bourne wrote only one essay in his wartime journalism concerned specifically with war aims and the course of the conflict: ‘The Collapse of American Strategy’, The Seven Arts, 2 (July, 1917), 409–27Google Scholar. For the attitudes of European intellectuals, the best source remains Rolland, Romain, Journals des Années de Guerre, 1914–1919 (Paris, 1952)Google Scholar. Rolland, in addition to preserving a detailed record of his own situation, transcribed into his journal much of his extensive correspondence with dissenting and radical groups in Europe and America. See also Starr, WilliamRomain Rolland and a World at War (Evanston, 1956)Google Scholar for Rolland's political activities during the war.

42 Bourne was quoted by one of his friends as being annoyed that the Justice Department did not take him seriously enough to pursue him! See Teall, Dorothy to de Lima, Agnes, 2 June 1932, Bourne PapersGoogle Scholar. Earlier legends of Bourne's manuscripts being confiscated, of police surveillance and so on, cannot be substantiated.

43 Bourne, , ‘Twilight of Idols’, The Seven Arts, 2 (10 1917).Google Scholar

44 Bourne, , ‘The War and the Intellectuals’, The Seven Arts, 2 (06 1917), 140.Google Scholar

45 Ibid., p. 134.

46 Ibid., pp. 141–5.

47 Bourne, , ‘Below the Battle’, The Seven Arts, 2 (07 1917), 273.Google Scholar

48 Bourne, , ‘A War Diary’, The Seven Arts, 2 (09 1917), 538, 539, 547Google Scholar. See also Bourne, , ‘Conscience and Intelligence’, The Dial, 63 (13 09 1917), 193–5.Google Scholar

49 Bourne, , ‘Twilight of Idols’, p. 688.Google Scholar

50 Ibid., p. 690.

51 Ibid., pp. 692, 695.

52 Ibid., pp. 697, 699, 700–1.

53 William Morris's observations on the Fabians are helpfully discussed in Williams, Raymond, Culture and Society (New York, 1959), see especially pp. 196–7.Google Scholar

54 Bourne, , ‘Twilight of Idols’, p.700.Google Scholar

55 It is worth noting that there were no grounds in the general position of The Seven Arts for attacking Dewey before Brooks introduced them. The Seven Arts group had in fact speculated on the possibility of securing Dewey's services as a member of the editorial board and they went to considerable lengths to secure contributions from him. They also published an effusive article on Dewey in the same issue which carried Brooks's ‘Our Awakeners’. It is likely that Bourne independently of Brooks would have rejected Dewey's specific statements about conscientious objection as he did in ‘Conscience and Intelligence’. It seems less likely that he would have extended the case in the way he did into a general critique of pragmatism as a political attitude without Brooks's stimulus. Dewey, 's role in The Seven ArtsGoogle Scholar may be seen in Frank, Waldo to Oppenheim, James, n.d. 1916, James Oppenheim Papers, New York Public LibraryGoogle Scholar. See also Manny, Frank, ‘John Dewey’, The Seven Arts, 2 (06, 1917), 214–29.Google Scholar

56 Lippmann, Walter, ‘Isaiah Jr.’, The New Republic, 5 (1 01 1916), 230Google Scholar. Lippmann and Brooks had met in London in 1913 and for the next two years Lippmann professed high enthusiasm for Brooks's work: ‘Are you planning to write soon about Whitman and Emerson? You certainly do pick out the most fascinating subjects, what with Wells and Symonds; an account of American literature is yet to be done, that's certain’. Lippmann, Walter to Brooks, Van Wyck, 2 September 1913, Van Wyck Brooks PapersGoogle Scholar, University of Pennsylvania Library. Early in 1914, Lippmann wrote of Brooks's work as ‘ … fine and personal and rich with intimate experience. It made me feel that the kind of thing I do is raucous, and noisy and sweaty. I like a good fight, but it's all so preliminary. It is on the conflicts that you've written about that real values and final judgments depend ’. Lippmann, to Brooks, , 5 February 1914, Broods PapersGoogle Scholar. It was hardly surprising that by early 1916 Lippmann should have found Brooks's work less immediate and central. Brooks had disqualified himself, in one sense, by refusing to join the New Republic staff when Lippmann invited him while Lippmann by 1916 had become convinced that there were intimations of possible cultural renewal in America.

57 Brooks, Van Wyck, The World of H. G. Wells (New York, 1915), p. 153.Google Scholar

58 Ibid., p. 68.

59 Ibid., pp. 68–70.

60 Ibid., pp. 17–18.

61 See Morris, William, ‘How I Became a Socialist’, The Collected Works of William Morris, ed. Morris, May (London, 1915) vol. 23, p. 288Google Scholar. Bourne's enthusiasm for Lippmann's work may be seen in Bourne, to Teall, Dorothy, 14 June 1915Google Scholar, Bourne Papers: ‘The great problem is, as Lippmann says in his great book Drift and Mastery – have you read it? If not you must do so at once. There is a book one would have given one's soul to have written – to know what to do with your emancipation after you have got it.’

62 Brooks, Van Wyck ‘Our Awakeners’, The Seven Arts, 2 (June, 1917), 236, 242–3, 244, 245, 246.Google Scholar

63 Ibid., pp. 238–40. Brooks's reference to studies on the control of fatigue may have been aimed at Lippmann's celebration of Goldmark's book on industrial fatigue as a model of the new ‘scientific’ inquiry into social problems. See A Preface to Politics, p. 55.Google Scholar

64 Brooks, , ‘Awakeners’, p. 240.Google Scholar

65 See Bourne, Randolph, ‘The Adventure of Life’Google Scholar, and ‘Some Thoughts on Religion’, in Youth and Life (New York, 1913)Google Scholar where passages such as this are common: ‘… we must learn that the interpretation of the world lies not in its mechanism but in its meanings and those meanings we find in our values and ideals which are very real to us. Science brings us only to an “area of our dwelling” as Whitman says. The moral adventure of the rising generation will be to learn this ideal thoroughly and to reinstate ideals and personality at the heart of the world’. (p. 167). See also Bourne's review of Victor Branford's Inlerpretation and Forecasts in Political Science Quarterly 30 (1915), 343–4Google Scholar where he places Branford in a tradition of sociology stemming from Ruskin, Morris and Geddes concerned as much with ‘artistic and life-enhancing social purposes’ as with ‘how our institutions have developed ’.

66 See the essays on Brooks in Stearns, Harold, America and the Young Intellectual (New York, 1921)Google Scholar and Rosenfeld, Paul, Port of New York (New York, 1924).Google Scholar

67 Bourne, Randolph to Brooks, Van Wyck, 27 March 1918, Brooks PapersGoogle Scholar. Bourne had known Brooks since 1915 but their friendship and collaboration were firmly established through The Seven Arts. Bourne's articles late in 1917 were written in close consultation with Brooks during a summer vacation in Connecticut; 1918 brought them closer together in a series of collaborative schemes. A passage towards the end of Bourne's letter of 27 March 1918 gives the best insight into their relationship: ‘The country must be dotted with dissatisfied people who cannot accept any of the guides offered to them. The childishness of the conventional leads is only equalled by the sterility of the intellectualist leads. It is this malcontented class that needs a new gospel. It is this class that would understand what you are driving at, and would be grateful even for a suggestion of the enterprise you suggest. I have dim notions of how that leadership could be created but you must tell me the technique you have in mind ’. Their joint efforts appeared only once when they wrote a reply to an article by Alice Corbin Henderson which linked them as men too preoccupied with the importance of criticism in literature: Bourne, Randolph and Brooks, Van Wyck, ‘The Retort Courteous’, Poetry, 12 (09 1918), 341–4Google Scholar. The details of the relationship and Bourne's admiration for Brooks's ‘better integrated, much more smoothly running’ intellectual style emerge from Bourne to Brooks, 31 July 1915, 12 November 1915, 13 July 1916, 16 February 1917, 7 August 1917, March n.d. 1918, 27 March 1918, 5 August 1918, 12 November 1918. Brooks Papers and Bourne, to Gregory, Alyse, 27 July 1917, n.d. 1918, Bourne Papers.Google Scholar

68 Bourne's ‘The State’ is part of the Bourne Papers; it has been reprinted several times. The most recent version is in Schissel, Lillian ed. The World of Randolph Bourne (New York, 1965)Google Scholar. Citations are from the Schlissel edition. For an extended discussion of the manuscript, see Lerner, Max, ‘Randolph Bourne and Two Generations’, Twice-A-Year, 5–6 (1940–1941). 54–78.Google Scholar

69 Bourne, , ‘The State’, in Schlissel, The World of Randolph Bourne, pp. 250–1.Google Scholar

70 Ibid., p. 264.

71 Ibid., p. 281 and generally pp. 276–85.

72 This is an expanded version of a paper read at the American Historical Association Annual Meeting, December 1969.