…Or Why the Rockefellers Aren’t Reptilians

By Will Banyan Copyright © September 2005 (Revised April 2008/February 2015)

Why does war command a solidarity of devotion and sacrifice that cannot be marshaled for peace? Raymond B. Fosdick, Foreign Affairs, January 1932 We let cynicism and lies and partisan politics get the better of us, and we chucked the League out of the window to satisfy a miserable political quarrel…Our generation in America has betrayed its own children and the blood of the next war is on our hands. Raymond B. Fosdick to Harry E. Fosdick, 29 March 1920

Introduction

Since the late 1940s hundreds of books have been published purporting to reveal the existence of a conspiracy to establish a global totalitarian dictatorship or ‘New World Order’, complete with a world army, world currency, a global religion and world government. Some of the classic texts in this much-derided genre included The Blue Book of the John Birch Society (1959), Kent and Phoebe Courtney’s America’s Unelected Rulers (192), John Stormer’s None Dare Call It Treason (1964), Alan Stang’s The Actor (1968) and Gary Allen and Larry Abraham’s landmark work None Dare Call It Conspiracy (1971). Many more important books about the N.W.O. appeared during the 1970s most of them written by Gary Allen including: Richard Nixon: The Man Behind The Mask, (1971), Kissinger: The Secret Side of the Secretary of State (1976) and The Rockefeller File (1976). Key titles of the 1980s included Larry Abraham’s Call It Conspiracy (1985), William P. Hoar’s Architects of Conspiracy: An Intriguing History (1985), A. Ralph Epperson’s The Unseen Hand (1985), and James Perloff’s The Shadows of Power: The Council on Foreign Relations and the American Decline (1988).

The period since the 1990s, however, must count as a golden age for N.W.O. research with the market flooded with new authors and new theories incorporating UFOs, mind-control, ancient astronauts and genealogy. Among the most significant works in recent years are: William Cooper’s Behold a Pale Horse (1991), Jim Marrs’ Rule by Secrecy (1996), Fritz Springmeier’s The Bloodlines of the Illuminati (1995), and the plethora of books by British researcher David Icke – among them The Robots Rebellion (1995), The Biggest Secret (1999), Children of the Matrix (2001), Alice in Wonderland and the World Trade Center Disaster (2002) and Tales from the Time Loop (2004) – and his late American antagonist, Jim Keith, author of Casebook on Alternative 3 (1994), Black Helicopters Over America (1994) and Saucers of the Illuminati (1999). More recent contributions of note include British researcher Nicholas Hagger’s two volumes: The Syndicate (2004) and The Secret History of the West (2005); and Daniel Estulin’s The True Story of the Bilderberg Group (2007).

All of these books go to great lengths to name the guilty parties, the organisations, families and individuals said to be behind the New World Order plot. Some of the groups named include secret societies such as the Illuminati, Freemasons, and Skull and Bones; and policy-planning organisations prime among them the Trilateral Commission, Council on Foreign Relations, Bilderbergers and more recently the Project on the New American Century. The families and individuals identified include the usual suspects: the House of Rothschild, the Rockefellers (David Rockefeller in particular), Henry Kissinger, Zbigniew Brzezinski, ‘Colonel’ Edward House, George Bush Senior, and now George Bush Junior, Dick Cheney, Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz. Reviewing the countless books, magazines, articles and websites critically examining the New World Order one cannot help but notice that in a remarkable oversight, the name of one seemingly obscure, yet actually very important figure is missing from this rollcall of the damned.

That individual, whose existence I first discussed in Part 1 of my series ‘Rockefeller Internationalism’ (which appeared in Nexus magazine in 2002/3), is Raymond Blaine Fosdick (1883-1972). In a career which included time as an aide to US General John Pershing (Commander of US forces in Europe during World War I) during the Paris Peace Conference; Under Secretary-General for the League of Nations in 1919-1920; and nearly three decades of close involvement in the network of foundations established by John D. Rockefeller Junior, including as a trustee to the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research, the Laura Spelman Rockefeller Memorial, the International Education Board, the General Education Board and the Rockefeller Foundation, and later president of three of these philanthropies, including 12 years as President of the Rockefeller Foundation; Fosdick hardly warrants being written off as a peripheral figure. John D. Rockefeller Junior once described Fosdick as one of his ‘close and valued associates for nearly forty years’;[1] yet he remains largely unknown to most readers of this genre and is rarely mentioned, if at all, by New World Order researchers.[2]

This omission occurs despite more than a few mainstream histories crediting Fosdick with converting Junior into a supporter of the League of Nations. Instead, with most researchers unaware of Fosdick’s key role, less plausible explanations for the Rockefeller involvement in the N.W.O. have been advocated. One in particular which has gained in popularity in recent years argues that the supposedly noble lineage of the Rockefellers is evidence they are of the ‘Illuminati bloodline’ or are even ‘reptilian hybrids’ that are therefore destined – if not genetically and spiritually programmed – to seek world domination.

The primary objective of this research paper is to alert other researchers and interested readers to the importance of Fosdick. Rather than being a marginal figure in the history of the New World Order, it is my contention that were it not for Fosdick’s calculated and ultimately successful effort to recruit John D. Rockefeller Junior to his way of thinking about world order, it is highly unlikely the Rockefeller name would be associated in any way with the push for international government.

To verify this hypothesis, this paper will be divided into two parts. In the first part those arguments put forward for Rockefeller involvement in the New World Order pre-dating the 1920s (the time when Fosdick became a close adviser to Junior) will be critically examined. This will include allegations the Rockefellers are Rothschild frontmen; that they possess Illuminati or ‘reptilian’ lineage; and were behind the League of Nations from the outset. In the second part the focus will be on the career of Fosdick, tracing his relationship with both Woodrow Wilson and John D. Rockefeller Junior, the origins and evolution of his liberal internationalist philosophy, his work for the League of Nations and the Rockefeller Foundation, and above all the evidence that it was he who convinced Junior to back the League. Ultimately, it will be shown that Rockefeller involvement in the New World Order was not predetermined, whether genetically, genealogically or financially, but was due in large part to the ideological influence of one man: Raymond Blaine Fosdick.

Part One: The Rockefellers And The New World Order

To properly understand Fosdick’s role in the New World Order it is necessary to revisit and reconsider a version of history that most of us in this field take for granted, namely that Rockefeller family involvement in the alleged world government plot probably dates back to the 1860s, when John D. Rockefeller Senior began his relentless and ruthless quest to dominate oil production in the United States. There are three ‘factoids’ offered in support of this contention:

It is claimed that were it not for crucial funding provided by the House of Rothschild, John D. Rockefeller Senior would never have been able to create Standard Oil.

The Rockefellers received those funds because they allegedly share the same ‘Illuminati’ or ‘reptilian’ bloodline as the Rothschilds and a host of other families implicated in the N.W.O., thus guaranteeing their involvement.

The Rockefellers are alleged to have been behind Colonel House, who is credited with manipulating President Woodrow Wilson into supporting both US involvement in the First World War and the subsequent creation of the League of Nations.

These are controversial allegations and proponents of these claims could be justifiably credited with attempting to alert the public to little-known historical material that might otherwise remain hidden. On closer inspection, however, each of these so-called ‘facts’ are revealed as standing on tenuous ground. In their eagerness to go beyond the boundaries of mainstream history with its sedate conclusions, some of these authors have succeeded only in producing sloppy research, repeating unsubstantiated claims without searching for original sources, and ignoring any evidence which conflicts with their theories. In the sections that follow we will attempt to illustrate the significant empirical flaws in each of these claims.

1.1 Frontmen for the Rothschilds?

To present Rockefeller involvement in the New World Order as somehow inevitable numerous analysts claim the Rockefellers are actually surrogates for the House of Rothschild. Hollywood film producer Myron Fagan, for example, in a lengthy polemic against the Council on Foreign Relations delivered in the 1960s, claimed that it was the banker Jacob Schiff, who was in fact an ‘agent of the Rothschilds’, who had ‘financed the Standard Oil Company’.[3] David Icke, referring to the fortunes of J.P. Morgan and John D. Rockefeller in his book …and the truth shall set you free (1995), repeated this allegation, though somewhat more cautiously:

There is evidence to suggest that the House of Rothschild was behind both of these great American business and banking empires, a demonstration of the Rothschilds’ brilliance for hiding the extent of their power and control behind frontmen and organisations.[4]

Four years later in The Biggest Secret (1999), however, Icke was more certain, charging that the Rockefellers ‘became the most powerful family in the United States with the help of Rothschild money and, no doubt, through other sources, too.’ This apparent fact prompted Icke to dismiss the Rockefellers as little more than ‘wealthy “gofers” answerable to higher powers’, who used ‘Rothschild and Payseur funding to build vast empires which controlled banking, business oil, steel etc, and ran the United States economy…’ while remaining ‘subordinate to the central operational control centre in Europe, especially London.’[5] Fritz Springmeier, another of Icke’s sources, claims in his controversial Bloodlines of the Illuminati (1991) that Rockefeller originally made his money selling narcotics before he branched out into oil, although ‘it was Rothschild capital that made the Rockefellers so powerful.’[6] In his detailed history of the New World Order, David A. Rivera claims: ‘In this country [U.S.], through their American and European agents, [the Rothschilds] helped finance Rockefeller’s Standard Oil, Carnegie Steel and Harriman’s Railroad.’[7]

More precise information on the alleged Rothschild link is provided in the book of the video, The Money Masters: How International Bankers Gained Control of America (1998), produced by Patrick S. J. Carmack. According to Carmack:

The National City Bank of Cleveland, which was identified in congressional hearings as one of three Rothschild banks in the United States, provided John D. Rockefeller with the money to begin his monopolisation of the oil refinery business, resulting in the formation of Standard Oil. Jacob Schiff, who had been born in the Rothschild Green Shield house in Frankfurt and who was then the principal Rothschild agent in the US, advised Rockefeller and developed the infamous rebate deal Rockefeller secretly demanded from railroads shipping competitors’ oil.[8]

The primary source of these allegations by Carmack, Icke and Springmeier, appears to be American researcher Eustace Mullins. In his book Murder by Injection, Mullins argues that the focus on Rockefeller’s greed ‘obscures the fact that from the day the Rothschilds began to finance his march towards a total oil monopoly in the United States from their coffers at the National City Bank of Cleveland, Rockefeller was never an independent power…’ Mullins continues:

However much of the Rockefeller wealth may be attributed to old John D.’s rapacity and ruthlessness, its origins are indubitably based in his initial financing from the National City Bank of Cleveland, which was identified in Congressional reports as one of the three Rothschild banks in the United States and by his later acceptance of the guidance of Jacob Schiff of Kuhn, Loeb & Company, who had been born in the Rothschild house in Frankfurt and was now the principal Rothschild representative (but unknown as such to the public) in the United States.[9]

According to Mullins, it was Rockefeller’s demonstrated callousness in the pursuit of his business goals that probably persuaded the Rothschilds to provide him with financial backing. Once they were sure they had ‘found their man’, the Rothschilds had sent their ‘personal representative, Jacob Schiff, to Cleveland to help Rockefeller plan further expansion.’ To prove his contention, Mullins quotes the following lines about Schiff from the 16 December 1912 edition of Truth magazine:

Mr Schiff is head of the great private banking house of Kuhn, Loeb & Company, which represents the Rothschild interests on this side of the Atlantic. He is described as a financial strategist and has been for years the financial minister of the great impersonal power known as Standard Oil.[10]

These allegations, though somewhat sparse with regard to concrete evidence, suggest a relationship in which the Rockefellers were not only financially dependent upon the Rothschilds for their rise to wealth power, but were ultimately subordinate to them. The basic dynamic of the alleged relationship can be seen in the following diagram (Figure 1).

Upon closer inspection, however, it becomes evident that the Rothschild-Rockefeller connection rests on at least four unproven assertions:

1.1.1 Who Did Rockefeller Borrow From?:

Although it is indisputable that John D. Rockefeller relied heavily upon bankers during the early years to finance the rapid growth of his oil business, there is remarkably little evidence that he borrowed exclusively, if at all, from Rothschild-controlled banks, especially their alleged subsidiary the National City Bank of Cleveland (NCBC). The problem, however, as anyone pursuing this issue will soon discover, is that in the numerous books tracing Rockefeller’s rise, his lenders are rarely identified. Ron Chernow in Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller Sr (1999), for example, notes that despite ‘his populist mistrust of bankers, Rockefeller owed much of his incandescent rise to their assistance.’ The identity of Rockefeller’s first non-family lender is given, but instead of an identifiable Rothschild proxy we have Truman P. Handy, a ‘kindly, benevolent old banker’. Chernow mentions more borrowing undertaken by Rockefeller during the 1860s, including his relations with two other bankers, William Otis and Stillman Witt, though not the banks they represented. But for Rockefeller’s biggest initial purchase, when he bought out his partners to take control of Cleveland’s largest oil refinery in February 1865 for $72,500, certain ‘sympathetic bankers’ are mentioned but not actually identified.[11]

Commenting on the same deal, Peter Collier and David Horowitz, authors of The Rockefellers (1976), observe only that Rockefeller ‘already had good enough standing in the Cleveland financial community to be able to borrow the purchase price.’[12] Similarly Ferdinand Lundberg in The Rockefeller Syndrome (1975) observes that Rockefeller ‘was constantly in need of new capital for expansion. He constantly borrowed heavily from the banks, where he was increasingly welcome as he always paid back on the dot.’ Unsurprisingly Lundberg does not name any individual bankers, but he does note that in his seemingly relentless search for cash, in 1867 Rockefeller had gone into partnership with the flamboyant Henry M. Flagler who had brought into Standard Oil new funds from both himself and his uncle, the wealthy whisky distiller Steven V. Harkness.[13] The need for Flagler and his rich uncle naturally begs the question: where were Rockefeller’s supposed Rothschild benefactors?

No more clues are to be found in David Freeman Hawke’s John D. (1980), which makes much of Rockefeller’s apparent belief in his father’s philosophy that one should ‘[b]orrow money in the present…in order to accumulate a fortune in the future.’ Hawke even quotes the view of Rockefeller’s first business partner, Andrew Clark, that he was ‘the biggest borrower I ever saw.’ But besides repeating the stories about Handy, Flagler and Harkness, and claiming that ‘John D. was a familiar face at all Cleveland banks’; not one of these banks is identified.[14] Commercial Bank president Truman P. Handy is mentioned briefly in Jules Abels The Rockefeller Millions (1965) as the source of a loan for $2000 for one of Rockefeller’s first business ventures, the firm of Clark and Rockefeller, which sold farm goods. Abels notes that ‘possibly out of gratitude Rockefeller later made Handy rich’, lending money to buy Standard Oil stock.[15]

Histories of the oil industry are just as vague. Daniel Yergin’s much vaunted account, The Prize (1992), for instance, notes: ‘As the oil boom progressed, Rockefeller, throwing himself wholeheartedly into the Great Game, continued to pour both profits and borrowed money into his refinery.’[16] The first volume of a much earlier work, Williamson and Daum’s The American Petroleum Industry (1959), although giving a fairly thorough chronicle of the oil refining companies acquired by Standard Oil, and Rockefeller’s clever tactics, is largely silent on where the money came from.[17] Anthony Sampson’s The Seven Sisters (1975) maintains the paucity of detail, noting that Rockefeller ‘expanded with great daring, borrowing wherever he could, and bringing in new partners.’[18] As always, Rockefeller’s insatiable need to borrow money is acknowledged, but his lenders remain largely anonymous.

At this point it would be tempting to conclude that Mullin’s allegations ought not be set aside as inconclusive and unreliable, but retained as an otherwise suppressed insight into how the world really works. Proponents of the Rothshcild-Rockefeller connection might even decide that, at best, the above authors were either ignorant of or indifferent to the question of precisely who lent Rockefeller his money. But, at worst they might suspect that these same writers of being part of a deliberate effort to suppress information about the Rothschild link. There is, however, at least one detailed source that throws Mullins claims into doubt.

Grace Goulder’s book, John D. Rockefeller: The Cleveland Years, (1972), produced by a Cleveland based historical society, provides some of the missing details. According to Goulder, Rockefeller’s first lender, Handy, was the president and principal stockholder of Cleveland’s then biggest bank, the Commercial Branch of the State Bank of Ohio. Handy, who had migrated to Cleveland from Buffalo in 1832, had revived the Commercial State Bank at the urging of George Bancroft, described as a ‘historian and statesman’ from Massachusetts, whose interests included state banking. Bancroft had raised ‘$200,000…in the East for the purpose.’ Handy, then in his mid-twenties, was made cashier; by the 1860s, when Rockefeller was starting out in business, he was bank president.[19] As noted in the other accounts, it was Handy who gave Rockefeller his first loan; but it seems that it was not the last. Rockefeller would later recall: ‘For long years after, the head of this bank was a friend indeed; he loaned me money when I needed it, and I needed it almost all the time.’[20]

Handy and the Commercial State Bank were not to be Rockefeller’s only source of finance. He also developed a close business relationship with the Second National Bank of Cleveland, and two of its officers, Stillman Witt from its board of directors, and Witt’s son-in-law, Dan Eells, who would later become president of the Commercial National Bank. The relationship with Rockefellers was close, according to Goulder, Witt and Handy were ‘always his allies’; Witt was even ‘his friend.’[21]

Goulder’s account of Witt, Handy and Eells, and the banks they represented: the Commercial State Bank, the Second National Bank and the Commercial National Bank; and the evidence of Rockefeller’s close relationship with those financiers obviously conflict with Mullins’ specific allegations about the National City Bank of Cleveland.[22] While it is possible that he may have borrowed from the NCBC, there is no evidence that Rockefeller relied exclusively or predominately upon that institution. But more importantly, there is also no evidence that the banks we know he did borrow from were Rothschild-controlled. Obviously a more exhaustive study of Rockefeller’s borrowing during that period and of the ownership of the various financial institutions in Cleveland might reveal such a connection,[23] but until that research is done Mullin’s claims must be treated as conjecture.

1.1.2 The Rothschilds and the National City Bank of Cleveland:

The second fallacy concerns the original allegation of Rothschild control of the National City Bank of Cleveland. Mullins’ claims this fact was revealed in ‘Congressional reports’, however his account is imprecise and unreliable. It is unclear as to what Congressional investigation or reports Mullins is referring to, and the researcher seems destined to hit a dead-end, unless one probes further on the Internet where the source is finally revealed to be a Congressional report from the mid-1970s. We can find this source cited in Rivera’s Final Warning:

A May 1976 report of the House Banking and Currency Committee…revealed that Rothschild Intercontinental Bank Ltd, which consisted of Rothschild banks in London, France, Belgium, New York and Amsterdam, had three American subsidiaries: National City Bank of Cleveland, First City Bank of Houston, and Seattle First National Bank.[24]

The problem is of course in how Mullins has used this information. Rivera has utilised it to illustrate continuing Rothschild control of the US banking industry and ultimately the Federal Reserve System (although its significance is debatable). Mullins, though, seems to think this information proves the Rothschilds financed the Rockefellers; but this seems unlikely for a number of reasons. For one, this snippet of information only establishes Rothschild control of the NCBC in the 1970s, and gives no clues as to whether they controlled it in the 1860s or 1870s.

It seems unlikely, though, that the Rothschilds, or their agent, August Belmont (1813-1890),[25] had a significant interest in the NCBC in the mid-19th century. Indeed, Belmont’s attempts to coax the Rothschilds into establishing a formal arm of the bank in the US had failed, leading to a decline in their influence. In fact a frustrated Belmont would later complain of his employers ‘utter want of appreciation of the importance of American business.’[26] Combined with the absence of evidence of Rockefeller borrowing exclusively or primarily from the National City Bank of Cleveland, the finding of the Congressional committee is of limited relevance to events in Ohio in the 1860s.

1.1.3 Rockefeller and Jacob Schiff:

Mullins claims that banker Jacob Schiff was the middle-man between the Rockefellers and the Rothschilds; but again the evidence is sparse and inconclusive. In Niall Ferguson’s massive history of the Rothschilds, The House of Rothschild (1998), Schiff barely rates a mention and is not identified in any substantive collaborative role with the Rothschilds beyond charity work. As numerous other mainstream accounts have long established, Rothschild’s primary representative in the US, a market they otherwise neglected, was August Belmont & Company. Yet this does not mean that Schiff had no dealings with the Rothschilds, as Evyatar Friesel, reviewing Naomi Cohen’s Jacob H. Schiff: A Study in American Jewish Leadership (1999), notes that in America’s ‘expanding economy’ of the 19th century:

Schiff entered with gusto into the financing of railroads and of new industries. As in the past, the Jewish bankers of different countries collaborated closely. Schiff and Ernest Cassel, the great English banker and industrialist, maintained close and personal business connections…Schiff, Cassel, the Rothschilds of London, and the Warburgs of Hamburg…collaborated in a wide range of businesses, especially the very rewarding financing of railroads.[27]

As for collaborating in the expansion of Standard Oil, it was claimed in a 1911 article in McClure’s Magazine that during the 1890s Schiff, of Kuhn, Loeb & Co., had been working with John D. Rockefeller Senior in his battle against J.P. Morgan for control of the railroads.[28] Chernow also notes that Rockefeller collaborated with Kuhn, Loeb & Co in 1911 to take control of the Equitable Trust Company, and also on numerous bond issues.[29] Yet in the broad scheme of things that was the Standard Oil colossus, Schiff was but one of a myriad of financiers who assisted Rockefeller’s relentless march to national dominance, especially once he had shifted operations from Cleveland to New York in the 1880s. Furthermore, the discerning reader would observe that ‘collaboration’ does not automatically imply subordination, whether of Schiff to the Rothschilds or of the Rockefellers to Schiff; or vice versa. Indeed even if Rockefeller had borrowed from a Rothschild source, it seems unlikely that he would have been beholden to influence as much of his borrowing, according to Charles Morri’s book The Tycoons (2005) were: ‘mostly cash flow loans that were quickly repaid, not long-term investment capital.’[30]

1.1.4 The Rothschilds and Globalism:

The final fallacy is the assumption, should a crucial dependency upon Rothschild-sourced money ever be proved, that being in debt to the House of Rothschild makes one automatically beholden to their globalist agenda. Aside from the fact that it is not normally the case for major banks to impose upon their corporate debtors the requirement they support the bank’s plans for world domination; Rockefeller managed his debt burden with such adroitness the banks were very rarely in a position to impose such conditions. The other problem, though, is in determining if the Rothschilds ever favoured world government in the first place.

There is reason for caution given that most researchers tend to cite as proof of this alleged goal the words of historian Caroll Quigley in his book Tragedy and Hope (1966), rather than any documentary evidence from the Rothschilds. Quigley had claimed that by end of the 19th century, the ‘far-reaching aim’ of many of the world’s leading bankers, prime among being the House of Rothschild, was to create ‘a world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole.’[31] This phrase has been widely interpreted to mean that the Rothschilds desire world government.

Mullins, though, goes much further and repeats the allegations made in William Guy Carr’s obscure and anti-Semitic book, Pawns in the Game (1956) that in 1773, Mayer Amschel Rothschild, the banking dynasty’s founder, called together twelve other wealthy and influential individuals to a meeting in Frankfurt. At this meeting Rothschild allegedly set forth a plan for this group to ‘finance and control the World Revolutionary Movement’ for their use as a tool to ‘win ultimate control’ of the ‘entire world’. Reading from a ‘carefully prepared plan of action’, Rothschild had supposedly detailed an elaborate strategy, including the use of ‘panics and financial depressions’, which would ‘ultimately result in World Government, a new order of one world government.’[32] The more cautious reader might wish to see the documentation to support Carr’s extraordinary story, or even elicit an explanation from Mullins for his uncritical use of Carr, but they are unlikely to get an answer.[33]

Instead one must turn to Ferguson’s massive tome, The House of Rothschild (1998), based on exclusive access to the Rothschild family archives, which establishes that the Rothschilds used their money and influence (though not always successfully) during the 19th century primarily to prevent war and revolution within Europe. Yet this did not fit into any dystopian scheme for world government, but was apparently motivated by nothing more than a selfish desire to protect the international bond market from fluctuations that could threaten their wealth.[34] It was only at the end of the 19th century that the Rothschilds began to evolve any serious world order aspirations, assuming a ‘pivotal role’, according to Ferguson, in trying to establish an Anglo-German alliance. This envisaged combination, Nathaniel Rothschild had enthused in 1912, would unquestionably ‘command the respect of the whole world and ensure universal peace.’[35] History would soon reveal the folly of this vision; but more importantly, there is no evidence the Rockefellers ever supported that strategy.

As this litany of error reveals, the proponents of the Rothschild-Rockefeller connection seem to have no qualms about making the most extraordinary allegations without making any effort to substantiate them, let alone get the essential details right. Although more research might (but only if it actually existed) eventually expose the much-vaunted Rothschild financial connection to Standard Oil’s early days, there are few signs that any of the aforementioned researchers plan to verify their claims. In the meantime the Rothschild-Rockefeller link can only be treated as speculation not fact.

1.2 The ‘Illuminati Bloodline’

The second explanation, first promoted by Fritz Springmeier in his monumental expose The Bloodlines of the Illuminati (1995), are that the Rockefellers are one of a clique of thirteen elite families which share the same Satanic ‘Illuminati’ bloodline and have been committed since time immemorial to secretly ruling the world. The Rockefellers, writes Springmeier, are ‘one of the 13 bloodlines that rule the world.’ William Avery Rockefeller, the father of John D. Rockefeller, was a man whose life was the ‘carbon copy’ of the typical Illuminati man, according to Springmeier. He was ‘totally corrupt and lacked any kind of morals’, made most of his money ‘dishonestly’, stole and lied, and was also ‘involved in the occult and practiced magic.’ As for the spectacular rise to wealth and infamy of William Avery Rockefeller’s son John D., Springmeier makes the following assertion:

One of the most best kept secrets were [John D. Rockefeller’s] secret dealings with the other Illuminati families. The Payseurs and other Illuminati families are all intimately involved in the rise to power of the Rockefellers.

David Icke has taken Springmeier’s claims further to claim the Rockefellers are in fact ‘reptilian full-bloods’ and thus compelled by biology to support the globalist agenda. The Rockefellers, argues Icke, benefited from Rothschild and Payseur largesse because they are one of the thirteen elite bloodline families who fulfil the role of ‘bloodline branch managers’ in the ‘Illuminati secret network’, a position attained by virtue of having a ‘different DNA to the rest of the population.’[36]

These genealogical arguments may make for compelling reading, especially when enhanced by Icke’s fantastic and horrific allegations, but they are too speculative to justify discarding more prosaic explanations for Rockefeller involvement in the New World Order. After all, despite their tremendous certainty, both Springmeier and Icke are very short on the actual detail of the Rockefellers supposedly ‘Satanic’ or ‘reptilian’ ancestry. Icke, for instance, seems unable to furnish any scientific evidence that the Rockefellers are in fact ‘reptilian full-bloods’,[37] instead he identifies royal or noble lineage, particularly descent from the ‘Merovingian-Windsor-Bush bloodline’, as a sure sign that one belongs to the ‘Illuminati bloodline.’[38]

Nevertheless, evidence of the Rockefellers supposedly noble lineage reportedly exists, though what conclusions can be drawn is open to question. The most reliable source of the Rockefeller line, according to Flynn, is the village of Sagedorf in Germany from where John D. Rockefeller’s great-great-great-great-grandfather, Johann Peter Rockefeller had migrated to America in 1722. For ‘Illuminati/reptilian bloodline’ enthusiasts, much can no doubt be drawn from the marriage between Rockefeller’s great-great-grandfather, William Rockefeller and his relative Christina Rockefeller, an act which united the two Rockefeller strains then present in America. Also of interest are the claims by a genealogist hired by the Rockefeller Family Association in the 1920s, to have traced the Rockefellers beyond Germany to Southern France. Known as Roquefueille (or Rocafolio in Latin), the Rockefellers French descendents, claimed the genealogist, ‘were titled people’ who ‘married and inter-married with the nobility…’, and had even issued their own coins. Added to the mix are the genes of Lucy Avery, wife of Rockefeller’s great-grandfather, Godfrey, which apparently carry traces of the ‘Plantagenets, including 16 English kings, one king of Scotland, a king of France and a German emperor.’[39]

Yet, according to Collier and Horowitz, the Rockefellers ‘did not aspire to genealogical eminence.’ To prove their contention they note that when Senior was informed by the Rockefeller Family Association of the possible ‘noble European origins’ of the Rockefeller name, the billionaire who attributed his success to no external force other than God, ‘remained unmoved.’[40]

But there are better reasons than Rockefeller’s religiosity for rejecting the genealogical theories of Icke and Springmeier. One remarkable fact, discovered by Mark Humphrys, a computer scientist and genealogical researcher based at Dublin City University, is that royal ancestry is actually extremely widespread. Researching the ancestry of his English wife Humphrys discovered that her family was descended from English royalty, as were many famous Irish rebels and the majority of American presidents. Yet, when he investigated the issue further:

Humphrys began to notice something odd. Whenever a reliable family tree was available, almost anyone of European ancestry turned out to be descended from English royalty – even such unlikely people as Hermann Goring and Daniel Boone.[41]

In fact, claims Humphrys, ‘Millions of people have provable descents from medieval monarchs…’[42] It seems that the odds are virtually 100 percent that every person on Earth is descended from one royal personage or another. As one report noted:

Take King Edward III, who ruled England during the 14th century and had nine children who survived to adulthood. Among his documented descendants are presidents (George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, John Quincy Adams, Zachary Taylor, both Roosevelts), authors (Jane Austen, Lord Byron, Alfred Lord Tennyson, Elizabeth Barrett Browning), generals (Robert E. Lee), scientists (Charles Darwin) and actors (Humphrey Bogart, Audrey Hepburn, Brooke Shields). Some experts estimate that 80 percent of England’s present population descends from Edward III.[43]

Humphrys’ findings have been confirmed by Joseph Chang, a statistician at Yale University, whose mathematical modelling has highlighted the fact that most people alive today are descended from a limited pool of ancestors. Moreover, the practice of random mating has meant that royal genes have mixed with ‘common’ genes to such an extent that ‘almost everyone in the New World must be descended from English royalty – even people of predominantly African or Native American ancestry, because of the long history of intermarriage in the Americas’ (Olson).[44]

With royal or ‘Illuminati bloodline’ ancestry so common its significance as a tool for identifying the source of the pro-New World Order inclinations of the Rockefellers appears to be limited. This has not stopped many researchers from making the fatuous assertion that those who hold political and economic power today owe it to their royal ancestry. The most popular version of this theory, advanced by the late Harold Brooks-Baker, who erroneously claimed be the director of Burkes Peerage,[45] is that in the US ‘every presidential candidate with the most royal genes and chromosomes has always won the November presidential election…’ The last prediction by Brooks-Baker, before his death in 2005, was that Senator John Kerry would defeat President George W. Bush in the 2004 election because of his lineage. Of great significance to Brooks-Baker was that Kerry was apparently related to all the royal houses of Europe and could claim kinship with Tsar Ivan “The Terrible”, a previous Emperor of Byzantium and the Shahs of Persia. ‘Every maternal blood line of Kerry makes him more royal than any previous American president’, Brooks-Baker claimed, adding that ‘the coming election – based on 42 previous presidents – will go to John Kerry.’[46] Kerry of course, failed to defeat the slightly less royally-endowed Bush in 2004; continuing a trend marked by the failure of royally-descended candidates William Taft, Adlai Stevenson, Gerald Ford, and George H.W. Bush to defeat their opponents who were devoid of such ancestry in the elections of 1912, 1952 & 1956, 1976, and 1992.

1.3 Woodrow Wilson’s Secret Controllers

The third strand of evidence for long-term Rockefeller involvement in the New World Order concerns their alleged links to President Woodrow Wilson’s advisor ‘Colonel’ Edward M. House; a combination that is credited with the formation of the League of Nations in 1919, an organisation described by some researchers as little more than a ‘stalking horse for world government’ (Icke). In this account Wilson is typically portrayed by N.W.O. researchers as the weak and self-deluded puppet of the wily House, who was in turn little more than an agent or errand boy for a cabal of financiers whose fervent desire was to create a world government. According to Icke, for example, political authority in the Wilson Administration was actually in the ‘hands’ of House, who ‘was there for no other reason than to serve the Elite…The Elite instructed Colonel House and he instructed Woodrow Wilson, who did as he was told…’ Allen and Abraham describe House as ‘The Insiders sheepdog who controlled Wilson.’ According to James Perloff, Wilson was ‘continuously guided by a front man for the international banking community, Colonel…House.’[47]

Filling the ranks of this ‘international banking community’ or ‘Insiders’ behind House are the usual suspects: the Rothschilds, the banker and industrial magnate J.P. Morgan, and even members of the British Round Table organisation, such as Lord Alfred Milner. The Rockefellers are also mentioned, although the accusations are rarely as explicit as those levelled against the other alleged culprits, yet such is the certainty they must have been involved many researchers feel compelled to include them. Gary Kah, for instance claims that House ‘was an Illuminist agent committed to the one-world interests of the Rothschild-Warburg-Rockefeller cartel, serving as their point-man in the White House.’ Allen and Abraham observe that the ‘same crowd’ behind the formation of the Federal Reserve, a group of bankers that included Paul Warburg, J.P.Morgan and John D. Rockefeller, backed House’s ‘behind-the-scenes’ activities designed to involve the US in the war. Henry Lamb claims that House ‘came to his position with Woodrow Wilson from an elite circle of friends known as the “Inquiry”: Paul Warburg, J.P. Morgan, John D. Rockefeller, John Davis, among others, all of whom had…[a] great interest in the League of Nations.’[48]

There is, however, a curious lack of detail with regard to the alleged involvement of the Rockefellers in Woodrow Wilson’s efforts to establish the League. While some attempts have been made to document alleged Rockefeller support for the Bolsheviks,[49] the same cannot be said for the case of the League, in fact most researchers seem to draw a blank. For the general reader, enthralled by the myriad names, dates and shocking details, this omission is usually forgotten and instead the following conclusion (Figure 2), what we might call the orthodox or standard interpretation, is drawn:

It should be noted, however, that on closer examination of the relevant historical sources this theory is not supportable.

1.3.1 Colonel House and the League of Nations:

First, although some sort of relationship (though not always cordial) between House and leading bankers such as J.P. Morgan and the Warburgs can be established from both his diary and the Intimate Papers of Colonel House (1926), crediting Colonel House with primary authorship of the League of Nations concept is a dubious proposition. Contrary to some claims, the main smoking gun cited, House’s anonymous political fantasy, Philip Dru: Administrator (1912), actually does not use the term. Instead House’s fantasy alter ego and dictator of America, Philip Dru, aspires to create a ‘comity of nations’ that will bring ‘a lasting and beneficent peace, and the acceptance of the principle of the brotherhood of man’, providing everyone followed Dru’s ‘international policy’.[50] That policy, however, rested on an Anglo-American global alliance, the invasion and annexation of Mexico after parcelling out the rest of the world to the other European empires, and increasing US naval power until it is ‘second only to that of England, and together the great English-speaking nations held in their keeping the peace and commercial freedom of the Seven Seas.’[51]

In both its Anglophilia and imperialist guile, particularly its advocacy of expanding US territory through conquest, House’s vision did little more than recycle the expansionist ideology of Theodore Roosevelt – who, incidentally, became in his final years an implacable foe of both Wilson and the League of Nations.[52]

The real origins of the League of Nations concept in the few decades prior to the First World War can be traced to steel magnate Andrew Carnegie and then scholar Woodrow Wilson. In the late 19th century, seeking to excise the guilt he had amassed with his fortune and reflecting the influence of Pall Mall Gazette editor and advocate of Anglo-American unity, William T. Stead (who was also close to Cecil Rhodes); Carnegie had embarked on a crusade for world peace, making a ‘British-American Union’ the central pillar of his vision.[53] By the start of the 20th century, however, Carnegie had dropped that idea in favour of a ‘League of Peace’ or ‘League of Nations’, comprising a combination of the leading imperial powers, complete with an international police force. Carnegie even publicised his proposals in a short article entitled ‘The Next Step – a League of Nations’ for Outlook magazine (25 May 1907).[54] That was five years before House recycled Roosevelt’s imperialist schemes in Philip Dru. Such was Carnegie’s fervour, that in 1910 he had established the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, an organisation devoted to the ‘scientific investigation and study of the causes of war and of the practical methods to prevent and avoid it’, with funding of $US10 million.[55]

As for Wilson, although more focused on domestic issues, the possibility of achieving world peace through some form of international organisation had entered his thinking on a number of occasions prior to meeting House. As early as 1887, writing in the Political Science Quarterly, Wilson had toyed with world federalism, suggesting ‘the confederation of parts of empires like the British, and finally of great states themselves’ could lead to ‘a wide union…of governments joined with governments for the pursuit of common purpose.’ In 1908, Wilson had joined the American Peace Society an organisation noted, according to Knock, for its ‘proposals for arbitration of international disputes and disarmament, and others pertaining to world federation.’[56]

The point is that years before House published Philip Dru with its somewhat juvenile imperialist daydreaming; Wilson had given serious thought to resolving conflict through forms of international organisation. A fact not lost on a plutocratic utopian like Carnegie who welcomed Wilson’s election with considerable joy, declaring to a friend his belief that Wilson ‘is for Peace…’ Carnegie subsequently wrote to Wilson, expressing his hope the new President would be ‘destined to succeed in banishing war between the most enlightened nations…’ In his response, Wilson reassured the ageing philanthropist that with regards to those seeking ‘international peace’, he would ‘always be on that side.’[57] Somehow Carnegie already knew…

Moreover, once in power, and not long after the First World War had commenced, it was Wilson, and not House, who had first devised the outlines of what would become the League of Nations. In the first week of February 1915, he had discussed with his brother-in-law, Stockton Axson, a four-point plan for an ‘association of nations’, that would be ‘bound together for the protection and integrity of each’, with any nation breaking that bond to be ‘punished’ through war.[58] Many N.W.O. researchers, though, are likely to retort that it was House who put together the first official US plan for the League of Nations in July 1918. This is indeed true; though it should also be pointed out that this occurred at the direction of Wilson, and was intended as response to a British proposal, the Phillimore Report. Moreover, Wilson was dissatisfied with House’s version; especially its weak provision for sanctions and the fact League membership was to be limited to the Great Powers. He changed it so League members could use force when imposing sanctions against any hostile power, and he extended membership to the smaller powers.[59]

More importantly, this relentless focus on House as the man pulling Wilson’s strings fundamentally misreads their relationship and exaggerates the abilities of House. Reading The Intimate Papers of Colonel House, edited by Charles Seymour with Colonel House’s guidance and approval, one cannot help but get the impression that Wilson was an easily distracted and wayward mind, who needed House’s practical support and foresight. Yet, given its publication some years after Wilson’s death, we should not be surprised that House would selectively release his papers to support a version of events that paint him as the true power behind Woodrow Wilson.

But House’s carefully crafted image as Wilson’s string-puller, accepted without question by many New World Order researchers, is dubious to say the least. As historian David Esposito points out in his analysis of House’s diary and other writings, Wilson’s so-called ‘Silent Partner’ was increasingly consumed by fantasies of his own brilliance, to the extent he ‘deceive[d] both himself and those around him and…tried to transform those fantasies into real life.’[60] In his communications with Wilson and foreign governments, for example, House frequently told them what they wanted to hear, covering up his numerous failures and deviations from Wilson’s instructions. House also abused his position as Wilson’s envoy as he tried to fulfil his Philip Dru fantasies, including his abortive attempt in June 1914 to establish a US-Anglo-German alliance to avert war; apparently without Wilson’s knowledge.[61]

House’s shortcomings were not lost on Wilson, even though publicly he hailed the Colonel as his ‘second personality’; privately he dismissed House: ‘intellectually [House] is not a great man. His mind is not first class. He is a counsellor not a statesman.’ Instead Wilson seemed to the find the most value in House’s: ‘utter self-forgetfulness and loyalty and devotion.’[62] The relationship did not remain intact however, especially after House disobeyed Wilson’s instructions at Versailles, agreeing to French demands that it be ceded the German Rhineland, and then supporting the detachment of the League Covenant from the Treaty of Versailles. A bitter Wilson would later complain that ‘House had given away [all] I had won before we left Paris.’ Angered by this betrayal, he stopped talking to House well before he was incapacitated by his stroke in October 1919.[63]

Curiously most New World Order histories evade the issue of the breakdown in relations between Wilson and House, preferring to accept the Colonel’s fantasies that he remained in contact with the crippled president – except when, in House’s imagination, Wilson’s wife conspired to keep his letters from reaching his stricken subject. Yet the fact remains that it was Wilson, not House, who had contributed the most decisive input into the League of Nations idea.

1.3.2 The Wilson-Rockefeller Link:

Another problem in this account is the missing link between John D. Rockefeller Senior, a loyal Republican, and the Democrat Woodrow Wilson. Allegations of Rockefeller financial support for Wilson’s 1912 electoral campaign have been made in a number of sources, although concrete evidence seems elusive. A tangled web of financial support from sources with Rockefeller connections can be discerned from Ferdinand Lundberg’s 1938 polemic America’s 60 Families. Lundberg claims that the ‘financial genius’ behind Wilson’s campaign was Cleveland H. Dodge from the National City Bank of New York (NCBNY), who secured the support of Jacob Schiff and Cyrus H. McCormick of the International Harvester Company to pay Wilson’s pre-convention costs. Dodge served on the NCBNY board alongside William Rockefeller, the brother of John D.; while Edith Rockefeller, one of John D. Rockefeller’s daughters, was married to Harold F. McCormick, son of Cyrus the part-owner of International Harvester.[64] Dodge, Schiff and McCormick were also among a group of 40 wealthy donors, who contributed nearly a third of Wilson’s campaign funds.[65]

There was also an alleged meeting between candidate Wilson and NCBNY co-directors James Stillman and William Rockefeller at the estate of NCBNY President Frank Vanderlip, although wrote Lundberg: ‘what was said has not…been placed upon the record yet, and perhaps never will be…’[66]

Yet Lundberg does not appear to have found any records of any money coming directly to Wilson from either John D. Rockefeller Senior or Junior. In fact Wilson’s record with the Rockefellers is not good; in 1908, for example, he had failed in a bid to secure funding from Rockefeller to help fulfil his controversial plans at Princeton University.[67] Lundberg does note how the ‘sinister’ Thomas F. Ryan, ‘of the Rockefeller camp’ had given enough money to control three key delegations that subsequently supported Wilson’s candidacy.[68] Yet there is no proof that Senior or Junior approved these alleged transactions; Ryan could have been acting alone. But Lundberg also records how in 1916 Senior and Junior had each donated $25,000 to the Republicans with no corresponding amount to the Democrats.[69] This is perhaps not surprising given Rockefeller Senior’s outrage at Wilson’s introduction of income taxes in 1913. ‘[W]hen a man has accumulated a sum of money’, commented Rockefeller, ‘the Government has no right to share in its earnings.’[70]

In sum, though, evidence of direct support, whether financial or otherwise, for Wilson from John D. Rockefeller Senior or Junior is lacking. Nor are there any signs – at least in The Intimate Papers of Colonel House – of any Rockefeller-House link either. When a more substantive link finally did emerge it was at the end of Wilson’s life and the conduit was the subject of this study: Raymond B. Fosdick. More troublingly, as this extended review has revealed, is the fact that the claims of many New World Order researchers seem to collapse under close scrutiny. This is an alarming finding and should hopefully inspire other researchers to take care to ensure their subsequent claims and findings hold up to inspection from less sympathetic audiences.

Part Two: The Talented Mr Fosdick

If we accept, then, that there is little credible evidence of Rockefeller support – whether secret or open – for the League of Nations concept prior to the 1920s; or that the Rockefellers were frontmen for the Rothschilds; or are descended from an ‘Illuminati’ or ‘reptilian’ bloodline; then alternative theories must be considered. Perhaps the most plausible, in the view of this author, is that Raymond B. Fosdick, a fanatical supporter of Woodrow Wilson’s vision of a world order built on international institutions and global free trade, successfully converted John D. Rockefeller Junior to his cause. This not a fringe idea, for it has been made – if fleetingly – in a number of mainstream accounts. In Titan, for example, Ron Chernow explicitly credits Fosdick with the conversion:

As a good Republican, Junior had initially refrained from endorsing the League [of Nations], but under Fosdick’s tutelage he shed his isolationism and gave two million dollars for its new library and liberally endowed its health organisation.[71]

The website of the United Nations Organisation Library in Geneva, however, gives two conflicting interpretations. First, in an article about John D. Rockefeller Junior’s financial support to the League Library, Fosdick is not credited with directly converting Junior to the cause, but nevertheless he is given a crucial role: ‘Through Raymond Fosdick, Rockefeller became acquainted with Arthur Sweetser, who encouraged his interest in the League of Nations.’[72] Second, in its brief biography of Fosdick, the UN Library confuses the issue by suggesting he converted John D. Rockefeller Senior and Junior into supporters of the League of Nations:

He encouraged John D. Rockefeller and his son to build a new League Library and provide financial assistance to humanitarian projects conducted by the League, to assist the League of Nations Association, World Court campaigns, and the Foreign Policy Association.[73]

One of the sources used in the first UN Library article, Collier and Horowitz’s book The Rockefellers, also attributed a key role to Fosdick, praising him as ‘one of the most influential men of his generation’ who was also ‘Junior’s lifelong associate and biographer’. It was Fosdick, they wrote, ‘who got Rockefeller involved and interested in the question of the realignment of global power that would begin to take place in the decade after World War I.’ Fosdick also ‘constantly brought new ideas and individuals to Junior’s attention’; although ‘even more important’ was his ‘impact on Junior’s view of international affairs.’[74]

Approved accounts by Rockefeller insiders, in contrast, evade the issue, either making no comment on Junior’s sudden shift of opinion, or noting it without explaining precisely how or why it happened. In their somewhat restrained and respectful account of Junior, The Rockefeller Century (1988), for example, former Rockefeller aides John Ensor Harr and Peter Johnson, mysteriously observe that Junior was ‘no supporter of Wilson’ until in the 1920s when he ‘came to accept the idea of the League of Nations and made significant financial contributions to its activities as the decade wore on.’ Mention is also made of Fosdick being both a ‘fiery champion of the League’ and ‘Junior’s closest and most trusted adviser.’[75] Fosdick is even credited with having ‘reinforced and extended the liberalising influence’ previously exercised by Junior’s public relations adviser, the future Canadian Prime Minister Mackenzie King. Yet the connection between Fosdick and Junior’s sudden change of heart about the League is not drawn, in fact it is denied. We should not think there was ‘a liberal cabal ensnaring Junior’, they argue, for it was Junior who had sought Fosdick out.[76]

But possibly the most tantalising, yet also evasive account is that of Junior’s youngest son, David Rockefeller who describes his father, in his autobiography Memoirs (2002), as a ‘staunch supporter’ of the League of Nations as though it had always been the case.[77] Junior’s ‘staunch’ support for the League, David revealed in a special message to a UN poster exhibition in 2000, was ‘instilled in me.’[78] This only raises the obvious question, given the agreement of Chernow, and Harr and Johnson that Junior was originally staunchly opposed to Wilson’s grand scheme for world peace: who instilled those pro-League sentiments in him?

As for the man in question, Fosdick, both his memoir and his biography of Junior acknowledge the shift in opinion, but he takes no credit for it, suggesting it was merely a matter of Junior naturally changing his mind. Thus, in his autobiography, Chronicle of a Generation (1958), Fosdick comments:

[Junior] was a Republican and I was an ardent Wilsonian Democrat. Again, I believed deeply in the League of Nations, while he, following in the line of the Republican Party, looked upon it, certainly in the early twenties, with some misgiving.[79]

In his fawning biography, John D. Rockefeller, Jr. A Portrait (1956), Fosdick writes that by the mid-twenties:

More and more Mr Rockefeller began to think in international terms. It is true that he had not favoured the League of Nations when it was first proposed. Just as he had taken his church affiliations from his father, so his political loyalties were similarly inherited, and he had followed the Republican Party in its opposition to President Wilson. But his opinions were invariably marked by tolerance, and inflexibility was not part of his character.[80]

Perhaps reflecting his earlier legal training and practice, Fosdick’s words are carefully chosen so as to merely hint at his success in persuading Junior to devote his father’s seemingly tainted (yet massive) fortune to fulfilling Wilson’s vision. The highlighting of Junior’s ‘inherited’ political loyalties and the stress on his ‘tolerance’ and flexible character could be Fosdick’s way of suggesting that Junior was easier to convince as he had not thought out the anti-Wilsonian position he had hitherto held so rigidly; that Junior had merely reflected his father’s will; until Fosdick persuaded him to abandon that in favour of a new point-of-view. That is, I contend, what is implied in Fosdick’s comments – as is represented in the following diagram (Figure 3).

What is the evidence for this sequence? In the sections that follow, starting with Fosdick’s earliest acquaintance with Wilson, his first work for Junior, his brief term with the League of Nations, through his role as a close adviser to Junior in the 1920s, and culminating in his twelve year presidency of the Rockefeller Foundation, we will attempt to demonstrate that this is the most plausible explanation.

2.1 Woodrow Wilson’s First Disciple

The story of Raymond B. Fosdick and the New World Order is the story of how one man of a humble background balanced the competing demands for his services from two powerful benefactors – one of whom was the President of the United States, while the other was the heir to one of the largest fortunes in the US – until he reached the position where he was able to exercise a dominating influence over the resources of latter in service of the vision of the former. The first of Fosdick’s benefactors, and perhaps the most influential person in his life, was Woodrow Wilson.

What becomes most evident in comparing Fosdick’s relations with his two patrons was his obvious awe and respect for Wilson, in contrast to Rockefeller whom Fosdick seemed to treat with a mixture of affection, deliberate obsequiousness and restrained condescension. Speaking about Wilson in a 1956 lecture at the University of Chicago, Fosdick was emphatic about his lifelong support for the famous president: ‘from the first day I had met [Wilson] until he died he had my wholehearted admiration and respect.’ Fosdick claimed to have had a ‘long and occasionally close association’ with Wilson that dated from 1903 when he had started studying at Princeton University, where Wilson was the president.[81] However, Fosdick also made it clear that he and Wilson were not in anyway what one might call friends:

I do not claim to have been an intimate friend of Woodrow Wilson. Very few people ever succeeded in establishing that kind of relationship with him…I cannot say that at any one time my relations with him bordered on familiarity. He called me by my last name, without the “Mr”, but that was as far as he ever went.[82]

The record, though, is more mixed and suggests that he and the typically aloof Wilson were perhaps closer than Fosdick was prepared to acknowledge. The reason for this closeness most probably stemmed from Fosdick’s obvious and sincere devotion to his benefactor, something that no doubt appealed to Wilson’s enormous ego. Among Wilson’s less appealing personal characteristics was his unflinching desire for power, as one historian recently observed: ‘If any trait bubbles up in all one reads about Wilson, it is this: he loved, craved, and in a sense glorified power.’ In his thesis, Congressional Government (1885), for example, Wilson had written: ‘I cannot imagine power as a thing negative and not positive.’[83]

In addition to this craving for power, according to the late Arthur Link, who had studied Woodrow Wilson for much of his life, Wilson was also driven by the ‘remarkable conviction that he was an instrument of divine purpose.’[84] As Fosdick himself acknowledged, Wilson was a ‘deeply religious man’, who believed that as President ‘he had been an instrument…in carrying out the will of God.’[85] These beliefs combined to form an autocratic, if not dictatorial vision of how political power should be exercised. Wilson believed the President – especially one instilled with divine purpose – should be served by a Cabinet which knew that its role was not to advise but to merely carry out his will, relieving him of the burdens of administration, while he carried out the more important task of leading and shaping public opinion.[86]

Unquestioning devotion, therefore, was the trait Wilson thought most desirable in his subordinates; something that became evident once he was in the White House. Most of Wilson’s cabinet officials, whom he distrusted in any case, were typically sidelined, save for Colonel House whose pretence of devotion worked for a time.[87] But unflinching devotion is what Fosdick demonstrated from the moment he met Wilson on the grounds of Princeton University in 1903.

Fosdick had started his junior year at Princeton after completing his freshman and sophomore years at Colgate University. Princeton had been a substantial step-up for Fosdick, the son of a teacher from Buffalo in New York State, but one that he had actively sought out. He found Colgate lacking in the necessary resources, while he knew Princeton to be well endowed, as well as being run by Wilson who gave ‘challenging courses in jurisprudence and constitutional law.’ His family was poor, yet somehow the money was found and in September 1903 Fosdick was at Princeton; on his third day there he met Wilson. The meeting – the two crossed paths whilst walking across the campus – is described in Fosdick’s memoirs and elsewhere, seems unremarkable, except for one important detail. It was Fosdick’s deliberate act of deference – doffing his hat to Wilson – something not practiced at Princeton, but an act that undoubtedly appealed to the new president of Princeton’s sense of self-importance and vanity, that brought Fosdick into Woodrow Wilson’s orbit. ‘I wish you would drop in to see me’, Wilson had told Fosdick, thus launching their long relationship.[88]

Fosdick is full of praise for Wilson the scholar and future President, hailing both his intellectual and leadership qualities. Wilson had the ‘mark of leadership…on his face’; as an orator he was ‘a scholar in action, a prophet touched by fire, with unmatched strength to persuade and move the hearts of his listeners.’ He was also ‘outstanding as a teacher’ and possessed an ‘intellectual brilliance which held his students spellbound.’[89] Among those caught up in Wilson’s spell was Fosdick who found his lectures most illuminating; as he would later wistfully recall: ‘For me Wilson lit a lamp which has never been put out.’[90]

Fosdick also credited Wilson with freeing him from a ‘philosophical cul-de-sac’ that he had been mired in since starting at Colgate. For two long years he had agonised over the ‘age-old problem of evil’; the ongoing presence of evil in the world seemed to bring into sharp relief the flaws in the Baptist doctrines upon which he had been raised. It was Wilson who gave Fosdick ‘the greatest help’ in resolving this impasse, his ‘intense devotion to things of the spirit’ helping him to realise that while some problems could not be solved:

men have a responsibility to carry on in this world, even if the gods desert them. There is a job to be done; there are injustices to be corrected, evils that need not occur. Within the framework of human possibility we can make this world an inviting home to live in instead of a place to freeze and fight and starve in.[91]

This moment of intellectual clarity hardly appears spectacular, let alone sinister, yet it illustrates Fosdick’s shift away from a form of Christian fatalism, to a belief in a religiously inspired activism, that anything one did to ‘improve’ the world must reflect God’s will. In time this would translate into a fanatical support for Woodrow Wilson’s greatest scheme the League of Nations.

Fosdick graduated from Princeton in 1905, and then completed a year of post-graduate work before studying law at New York Law School, much to Wilson’s apparent dismay; but his association with Wilson did not stop there. In 1912, during the presidential campaign, Wilson personally appointed Fosdick to be secretary and auditor of the finance committee of the National Democratic Committee. Fosdick recalls that he complied with Wilson’s request ‘without a moment’s hesitation’; despite being a Republican he believed that in Wilson ‘the country would find inspiring leadership of a new and unique kind.’[92]

Once Wilson was in the White House many more job offers followed. In 1914 Wilson offered him the position of Immigration Commissioner at the Port of New York, but Fosdick turned it down. Trying to persuade him, Wilson wrote Fosdick that he was ‘the very man we need’ and that it was his earnest desire to have him ‘associated with the administration in such a post of responsibility.’[93] A contrite Fosdick had to go personally to the White House to again refuse the offer, knowing ‘how irresistibly persuasive [Wilson] could be’. Years later Fosdick would wonder how he ‘escaped [Wilson’s] spell’ and would recall how he left the White House feeling that he had ‘sinned against the light.’[94] In 1917 a second job offer was made, this time for the Vice-Governorship of the Philippines, but again Fosdick refused considering himself to be inadequately trained for the position. Wilson accepted Fosdick’s reasons for refusing the post, though he claimed to be ‘heartily sorry’ with the decision.[95]

Wilson’s limited success in attracting Fosdick stemmed partly from the nature of the positions offered, but was also because he had found a new benefactor in the person of John D. Rockefeller Junior.

2.2 John D. Rockefeller Junior and the Bureau of Social Hygiene

In 1905, with curiosity growing about John D. Rockefeller Junior’s impending inheritance of his fathers vast fortune, one of William Randolph Hearst’s publications, Cosmopolitan, made the following prophetic comment:

No little interest is centered upon the world’s greatest fortune, that of Mr John D. Rockefeller. The fortune will in the course of years be inherited by the Son, Mr John D. Rockefeller Jr. It is needless to say that the power of the money covers so vast a territory that a man inheriting such a fortune has it within his power to revolutionise the world…or use it so evilly as to retard civilisation for a quarter of a century.[96]

This was not idle speculation, but an important question, especially given the vast sums involved, and the mixture of amusement and vitriol that had greeted Andrew Carnegie’s various schemes for world peace. John D. Rockefeller Senior had already begun to distribute his millions, and by 1921 had disbursed at least half his fortune to a range of philanthropies and charitable institutions. Of the remaining $500 million, Senior gave $465 million to Junior between 1917 and 1921, much of it in the form of bonds and stocks.[97] What Junior did with what were widely regarded as Senior’s ill-gotten gains, could not be ignored.

Disposing of a great fortune, especially in the noble cause of philanthropy, is a difficult task that can easily result in the would-be benefactor to the masses being overwhelmed with requests from the ‘needy’. To better manage these demands, to keep the masses at more than arm’s length and to ensure that one’s funds are distributed in the appropriate manner, the super-rich, following the example of Carnegie – usually hailed as the ‘father of philanthropy’ – have tended to delegate responsibility for dispensing their fortunes to trusted subordinates. Usually, the subordinate is expected to do no more than execute in detail the grand design of the plutocrat. Yet there are many cases where the mere assistant becomes something else, such as an ‘adviser’ or an ‘associate’, who not only helps to manage the philanthropic effort, but influences in no small measure the strategic visions of the robber baron-turned-philanthropist.

In the Rockefeller family this trend had already been set in train when John D. Rockefeller Senior, his health ailing and his investments a tangled web, employed a former Baptist preacher, Frederick T. Gates, as his personal adviser in 1891. Gates would go on to head Rockefeller’s private office, managing both his financial affairs and his philanthropic pursuits. Although keen to disburse his vast fortune to the ‘benefit of mankind’, Senior paid little attention to exactly how Gates did it; Junior though, as the designated heir, became increasingly involved in Gates’ numerous schemes. He would later pay tribute to Gates as the ‘brilliant dreamer and creator’, down-grading his own role that of a ‘go-between’ with his father. Collier and Horowitz attribute to Gates’ influence the creation of the Institute for Medical Research, the General Education Board, the Rockefeller Foundation and the Laura Spelman Rockefeller Memorial Fund. Perhaps reflecting their leftist sympathies of the time (since repudiated), Collier and Horowitz also credit Gates’ ‘missionary fervour’ with drawing Junior into a ‘community of men and ideas’ that would come together after World War I as ‘America’s overseas empire builders.’ Junior’s behind-the-scenes work with the philanthropies also brought him into contact with Fosdick.[98]

Junior first met Fosdick in May 1910 while acting as foreman in a special grand jury investigation into ‘white slavery’ in New York City. Fosdick, then the New York City Commissioner of Accounts with a reputation for rooting out municipal corruption, was one of a hundred experts Junior had consulted in his quest to solve the problem of prostitution and at the same time re-invent himself as a civic reformer rather than the only son of the impossibly rich and widely despised founder of Standard Oil. The seeds of the future relationship were planted during that initial meeting. Fosdick notes that he saw Junior on a few occasions thereafter and was even called upon as a speaker at the annual dinner of Junior’s Bible class.[99]

Junior’s work on the prostitution also had its consequences. First, in 1911 he had founded a secretive ‘Committee of Three’, comprising himself, the banker Paul Warburg and the lawyer Starr Murphy, for the purposes of eradicating prostitution. The lack of public visibility stemmed from Junior’s desire for his ‘permanent body of wise, sane, intelligent, forceful men and women’ to devise solutions to the problem in as ‘quiet and unostentatious’ manner as possible. By 1913, though, Junior had gone public, renaming the organization the Bureau of Social Hygiene (BSH).[100] Second, Fosdick had been retained by Rockefeller who tasked him with writing a report on police practices in Europe for the BSH. Fosdick then spent much of 1914 in Europe researching the issue, later publishing European Police Systems (1915); and upon his return Fosdick had continued in the Rockefeller orbit, serving as a trustee at the General Education Board and the International Education Board.[101]

Judging by Fosdick’s sparse comments, John D. Rockefeller Junior did not make much of an impression upon him. One need only contrast his all too brief description of his future benefactor’s physical characteristics after their first meeting – Junior was a ‘trim, youthful looking figure’ – with the entire paragraph he devotes to the plethora of leadership traits he found in Wilson’s appearance.[102] There was no awe; Junior cast no spell. Indeed, it seems that Fosdick regarded Junior as little more than a well-meaning individual, always eager to please, whose only other distinguishing feature was that he was immensely rich. As he would later write, Junior was ‘a person of great sincerity and integrity, with a lively sense of social responsibility’, and a ‘modesty of spirit’ rare for one so rich. But above all, unlike Fosdick’s idol Wilson, Junior was not a man of grand ideas or strong beliefs, indeed there was ‘nothing dogmatic or opinionated about him’ instead he ‘wanted to be convinced.’[103]

Even in the entire book Fosdick devoted to Junior, there is none of the undeniable hero worship he gives to Wilson; instead there is a massive effort to downplay Junior’s nervous disorders and deep feelings of unworthiness. In parts this reaches into the realms of fiction: Junior was ‘occasionally troubled, but he was seldom the prey of anxiety’, wrote Fosdick,[104] contradicting Junior’s long history of nervous illness, including a breakdown in 1904 and a severe bout of headaches, nervous exhaustion and temporary deafness in 1922, both requiring extended periods of hospitalisation and recuperation.[105] Fosdick can only find in Junior, ‘one of the most modest, unassuming, unpretentious men imaginable’, the traits of ‘tenacity’, ‘sensitivity’, and ‘humility’, as well as the attributes of a ‘perfectionist.’[106] Perhaps Fosdick actually liked him, but to him John D. Rockefeller Junior was no prophet…

2.3 ‘The memory of this day will live in my mind for ever.’[107]

Fosdick did not return to Woodrow Wilson’s service until 1916, making his contribution to the war effort as chairman of the Commission on Training Camp Activities in both the Navy and War Departments. His job involved developing training and recreational activities for US soldiers to maintain both morals and morale, by limiting their exposure to alcohol and prostitution, and encouraging more wholesome pursuits including theatre and athletics. Working under the Secretary of War, Newton Baker, this position took Fosdick first, to the Mexican border and then ultimately to Europe. It also brought him much closer to Wilson:

[T]he President was deeply and personally interested in our work and I was probably closer to him during this period than at any other time. He wrote me letters about our activities and I frequently conferred with him at the White House.[108]

After the Armistice brought World War I to end in 1918, Secretary Baker decided that Fosdick should go to France with General Pershing, the commander of US forces in Europe, and December 1918 he set sail for France on the USS George Washington. This was to be no ordinary Atlantic crossing, through what Fosdick thought had to be ‘rare good fortune’, the USS George Washington was also carrying Woodrow Wilson and the US delegation to the Paris Peace Conference. Fosdick would later rank his journey with Wilson as ‘one of the memorable experiences of my life’ for ‘History was being made.’ It certainly was epochal, given what was to come at Paris, and the lengthy journey afforded Fosdick the opportunity of a number of discussions with Wilson during which ‘he spoke with the utmost frankness’ about the League and other topics.[109]

On 11 December, for example, Fosdick had a one hour conference with Wilson in his rooms on ‘matters of which I may not write.’ Nevertheless, Fosdick recorded in his diary that Wilson had talked to him ‘with the utmost frankness – indeed with an amazing frankness’ about some of the world leaders they were about to parley with in Paris. As Fosdick would later relate to another delegation member William Christian Bullitt, Wilson had apparently described British Prime Minister Lloyd George as ‘a man without principle’; the French Prime Minister Clemenceau, as ‘an old man, too old to comprehend new ideas’; the Italian Prime Minister Orlando as ‘a damned reactionary’; and the British Secretary of War, Lord Alfred Milner (Round Table), he dismissed as ‘a Prussian.’ Wilson had also described Bolshevism as ‘a poison’, and had speculated on its future in Russia and globally.[110]

Fosdick’s closeness to Wilson was remarked upon favourably by Clive Day, a member of ‘The Inquiry’, the group of academics recruited by Colonel House to assist Wilson at the Paris Peace Conference. Writing to his wife, Day recalled a ‘heated discussion’ with, among others, Fosdick and Bullitt over Wilson’s plan for the League of Nations. It was an ‘impressive thing’ he noted, the way in which Fosdick and Bullitt ‘go to the President and tell him what they think he ought to do.’ ‘They have real influence…’ he mused, for unlike others in the delegation, ‘they have ideas for which they are willing to stand…’ Although hopeful, Day was not quite as confident about the Inquiry: ‘I distrust some of my colleagues.’[111]

The voyage culminated in Woodrow Wilson’s triumphant parade through the streets of Paris on 14 December 1918. ‘The memory of this day will live in my mind forever’, Fosdick wrote in his diary, as he viewed ‘the most remarkable demonstration of enthusiasm and affection on the part of the Parisians that I have ever heard of, let alone seen.’ Yet Fosdick remained cautious, aware that even Wilson could not work miracles:

Poor Wilson! A man with his responsibilities is to be pitied. The French think with almost a magic touch he will bring about the day of political and industrial justice. Will he? Can he?[112]

The answer would not prove to be too long in coming.

2.4 Under-Secretary General of the League of Nations

The Paris Peace Conference also marked the start of Fosdick’s own role in Wilson’s League of Nations scheme. An offer to join the League came in May 1919, just two days after Fosdick returned from France. Acting Secretary of State Frank Polk, had informed Fosdick that Wilson, who was still in Paris, wanted him to take up the position of Under-Secretary General at the League of Nations. The request for Fosdick apparently came directly from the League of Nations first Secretary-General, Sir Eric Drummond. Fosdick felt ill-prepared for the position and argued that he lacked the necessary experience for ‘so unique an undertaking.’[113] A few days later, however, a detailed and flattering cablegram from Colonel House seemed to change his mind. Pointing out that Fosdick had been selected as the ‘designated American’ for the position; House had then deployed all his powers of persuasion:

It is absolutely necessary that we should have our very best men connected with organising this great work and also that the men we select should be of broad sympathies, thoroughly trained in big affairs and with a liberal point of view. It is my opinion that there is no work in the world to be done at the moment more important than this work and I shall be personally deeply disappointed if you are unable to accept.[114]

Fosdick accepted. ‘[I]t was a call to service from which I could not escape’, he later wrote, as well as ‘a chance to play a part in a brave, new world…’ He soon sailed for London to join Secretary-General Drummond and his counterpart Under-Secretary General, Jean Monnet, at the League’s temporary headquarters.[115] It was a major step in Fosdick’s career; he was the highest-ranking American in the organisation, and it was also a testament to Wilson’s faith in Fosdick’s devotion to his vision. But it was also to be the most frustrating episode in his career.

During his brief time at the League, Fosdick had dealt extensively with Colonel House, who was in London to participate in the mandates committee chaired by Milner. Fosdick had known House since 1914, when they had sailed to Europe on the same ship just before the outbreak of the war.[116] In fact, it was not to be a passing acquaintance, as Fosdick recalled: ‘I saw a good deal of him not only during the trip, but later both in Berlin and at his apartment…in New York.’ Fosdick describes his relations with House as being ‘periodic and never really intimate’, yet he admitted to being ‘truly fond’ of the quietly spoken Colonel. However, Fosdick found aspects of House’s behaviour ‘perplexing’, in particular his ‘vanity…a love of power that was not always well concealed.’ House, he suspected, ‘was not averse to being known as the power behind the throne, but he preferred to be an unseen power.’[117]

In the first few months, feeling confident the League of Nations treaty would be quickly ratified, Fosdick and his colleagues worked obsessively on devising the procedures for the new international organisation. As Fosdick explained to his wife, this urgency came more from him and Monnet; Drummond apparently took the view that with the world quickly evolving into a single economic unit, time was not only on their side, the League was inevitable. Fosdick and Monnet, though believed their generation was ‘in a race with international anarchy’ and that the world ‘has very little time in which to set up the framework of international government and establish the habit of teamwork.’ We have ‘far too little time’, he lamented, and there was a ‘frightening danger’ that before the League could take effect, the nations of the world would suddenly be overwhelmed by ‘some new emergency.’[118]

To aide their efforts, Fosdick and his colleagues had sought advice from House and Lord Robert Cecil, the British foreign secretary; both men, Fosdick was convinced, were destined to represent their countries at the envisaged Council of the League of Nations. This collaboration, however, was not viewed favourably in Washington DC. In a memorandum dated 21 August 1919, Secretary of State Robert Lansing reported on ‘interesting information’ he had received from Inquiry head Dr Isaiah Bowman on the activities of Colonel House in London. Of particular concern was House’s ‘strong’ support for the creation of League Bureaus of Information and Correspondence in each capital that would deal directly with government departments, bypassing their foreign offices. This information:

…confirmed a warning which I had received yesterday…that the Commission of Organisation, on which are Cecil, Drummond, Fosdick and House, was planning to constitute bureaus which were to be independent of all foreign offices reporting to and receiving instructions from the Secretariat of the League. It looks to me as if Sir Eric Drummond and Colonel House were endeavouring to increase the powers of the Secretariat beyond reason, so that the Council of the League would manage all world matters.[119]

If this scheme were to go ahead, Lansing had privately resolved to ‘declare the truth’ and fight to defeat it.[120] Fosdick, though, had bigger problems emerging in the US Senate, elements of which, led by Senator Henry Cabot Lodge – a long-time associate of League opponent Theodore Roosevelt – were determined to not only alter America’s commitments to the League, but hopefully prevent its participation. It was around mid-August, Fosdick would later recall, that ‘we suddenly became alarmed, and with me it was alarm and anger.’ In October 1919 Drummond dispatched Fosdick to Washington DC to represent the League Secretariat as the Senate debate escalated. For Fosdick the ensuing months of debate were an ‘unrelieved nightmare’.[121]

He remained in contact with the State Department, Colonel House and Secretary Baker, and through various channels attempted to advance the League’s case. For example, Fosdick collaborated with two other American League officials, Arthur Sweetser and Manley Hudson, to write an anonymous memorandum to be sent to the US media criticising the very idea of America’s League membership being subject to reservations:

It is preposterous for us to think that we can enter the League of Nations on a specially privileged basis, free of many of the obligations binding other nations, or that these other nations have no particular points and principles which they too would desire to have excluded from the operation of the League…once this policy of national self-seeking prevailed….With this spirit operating there would be left nothing but the shadow of the League…[122]

But this was all to be of no avail. Senator Lodge, Fosdick concluded, ‘was bent on the complete defeat of the [League] Covenant.’ In January 1920, with the League Council due to meet, the situation had reached another crisis-point; the Senate fight was still underway and Fosdick realised that the presence of an American Under-Secretary General would only give ammunition to Lodge and his supporters. Unable to secure advice from either Wilson or House (both were ill), Fosdick decided to resign.[123] In his press statement on 19 January 1920, Fosdick announced his ‘deep regret’ in having to resign; but it was a decision ‘forced’ by circumstance, he said, and ‘not for a lack of faith in the League.’[124]

2.5 ‘The League [of Nations]…is this generation’s only hope…’[125]

Returning to private life in March 1920, Fosdick did not move immediately into Junior’s employment but instead joined with two other lawyers who had government experience – James Curtis and Chauncey Belknap – to establish the law firm of Curtis, Fosdick and Belknap. Fosdick’s first client was Junior who urged him repeatedly during his first year back in the US to give up the law firm and come to work in his office. Fosdick, however, ‘resolutely declined’, later recalling that he desired ‘independence and freedom’, something he felt assured of while practicing as a lawyer.[126] His additional comments on this matter are worth recounting for they show his desire to be independent of Rockefeller control:

A lawyer is his own master. In relation to the clients who come to him he can be as rigorously selective as he pleases. He is not responsible for their political or economic opinion, nor are they responsible for his. He can identify himself with the social causes that appeal to him without involving those whom he serves as counsel. His intellectual life and interests can be as unrestricted and uncoerced as he chooses to make them.[127]

Independence was what Fosdick desired, and by serving as Junior’s external advisor this is what he retained. But what were those ‘social causes’ that Fosdick wished to identify himself with; what ‘intellectual life’ did he wish to pursue unimpeded by the demands of an employer? Fosdick had signalled his intention to Captain Huntington Gilchrist, an American Army officer who was his assistant at the League, in a letter explaining his resignation:

Altogether it is a sorry agonising mess, and as an American I hang my head in shame. My only satisfaction in resigning is that it releases me from the burden of silence. I can now speak my faith before the world. I shall do it in as loud and eloquent tones as I can employ.[128]

His new objective, quite simply, was to become a loud public advocate for US membership in the League of Nations. Driving this was Fosdick’s despair and growing anger at both his resignation and the subsequent failure of the Senate to ratify the League Covenant. In letters to his wife, while returning to London in March 1920 to tidy up his League affairs, Fosdick lamented ‘America’s desertion’ of the League and that Americans ‘weren’t wise enough’ to take advantage of the ‘most unique opportunity’ in a generation. ‘It is America’s tragedy’, he later wrote from London, ‘It is the tragedy of the next generation.’ ‘Our generation’, Fosdick also wrote to his brother Harry Emerson Fosdick – the Baptist preacher whose sermon would open the first session of the League and who would also head Rockefeller’s church – ‘has betrayed its own children and blood of the next war is on our hands.’[129]

As for Woodrow Wilson, Fosdick retained his faith; ‘History will vindicate him and will place him among its prophets and heroes’, Fosdick told his wife.[130] At this point it is important to review exactly what Wilson’s original New World Order vision entailed. There were four main components:

The creation of a League of Nations, that would serve as a global forum to settle territorial disputes through arbitration, but it would also have the power to enforce those settlements. The establishment of a global free trade regime, which was specified in Wilson’s famous Fourteen Points as the ‘equality of trade’ to be achieved through the ‘removal…of all economic barriers.’ Regional integration, at both the political and economic levels, such as that originally tried in the failed ‘Pan-American Pact’; the purpose of which, according to Colonel House, was to ‘weld North and South America together in closer union.’[131] To bring about this world order, the United States would have to assume a crucial global leadership role. America would take the lead in creating each of the aforementioned components and ensuring that other nations participated.

Utterly convinced the only way to ensure world peace was through some form of ‘international government’, and that only the US could make it happen, Fosdick devoted his energies shaping elite and public opinion in that direction. He directed most of his efforts from his lawyer’s office, helping to create in 1923 the League of Nations Association (LNA). Fosdick would spend some fifteen years on the LNA executive committee, including as its president from 1933 to 1935.[132] He was also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and had been among its first members when it was created in 1921.[133] At the CFR he retained an ally in Hamilton Fish Armstrong, who had become Editor of the CFR’s flagship publication, Foreign Affairs, in March 1922 – a position he would hold for some fifty years. Armstrong had in fact been accepted by Fosdick as his assistant at the League in October 1919; however, Fosdick’s own resignation prevented Armstrong from taking up the post. For much of his life, though, Armstrong remained ‘a firm Wilsonian who never entirely lost his youthful faith in and loyalty to the League of Nations…’ (Roberts).[134] Both organisations would prove useful in advancing Fosdick’s cause.

During the 1920s Fosdick made numerous public appeals for US participation. Writing for the Atlantic Monthly in June 1920, for example, Fosdick had reviewed the League’s progress, confirming its success, but had finished with a plea for American involvement. Only the US fit the bill, he argued, of the ‘great, disinterested, democratic power, with no warlike traditions to maintain, with no far flung empire to protect, with no territorial ambitions to be satisfied’ that could ‘compel the universal adoption of a policy of progressive disarmament.’ But, he lamented, America had ‘gone over to the other side’ and ‘repudiated the League of Nations’, thereby ‘jeopardising the peace of the world.’[135]

In the Atlantic Monthly of October 1920, as the League began to falter, Fosdick blamed its problems squarely on America’s non-involvement: ‘the failure of the United States to join the League has handicapped its first months.’ The US, he noted, was the ‘only great, disinterested nation that could have bought detachment and vision to the League’s deliberations.’ If America had been part of the League ‘the reactionary elements of Europe would never have dared to trifle with it.’[136]

Fosdick’s efforts were successful in attracting attention, though the depth of his feeling for the League rather than the organisation itself became the issue. This became quite obvious during the Harding Administration, especially when it was revealed that the State Department – then lead by former Rockefeller Foundation trustee Charles Evan Hughes – had not been answering any letters from the League. Fosdick had railed against what he saw as both a ‘deliberate effort to hasten’ the League’s ‘dissolution’ as well as an ‘individual slight’ to its 48-member states.[137] As his attacks on the Harding Administration intensified the New York Tribune dismissed Fosdick as a ‘Blue Wilsonite’ – ‘one who falls on the floor and vainly raves.’ In October 1924 Fosdick got into a public stoush with Secretary Hughes, accusing the Harding Administration of treating the League with ‘cavalier contempt’ and assuming an ‘obstructive role’. According to Fosdick, Hughes soon responded with a ‘caustic speech’; and there were to be many more such ‘bitter exchanges’ with Hughes.[138]

Some decades later, in his Pulitzer Prize-winning biography of Hughes, the journalist Merlo Pusey would make disparaging references to the attacks on Hughes by Fosdick and his supporters, variously labelling them as ‘disgruntled pro-League forces’, ‘fiercely pro-League Americans’, and ‘more passionate Leaguers.’ These ‘League enthusiasts’, Pusey observed ‘often proved to be the League’s worst enemies in the United States’, as they tended towards ‘short-sighted manoeuvres’, and seemed driven by ‘illusions’, including a ‘faith in mere organisation.’[139] Commenting on Pusey’s portrayal, Fosdick was unrepentant:

In an excellent biography of Mr. Hughes, published a few years ago, the author called me a ‘disgruntled pro-Leaguer’, and hinted that I was a fanatic. I have no quarrel with these characterisations. Certainly no cause stirred me so profoundly.[140]

And a fanatic he was, maintaining his tirade against America’s failure to participate in the League throughout the 1920s into the 1930s. In an article in the Virginia Quarterly Review in July 1925, for example, Fosdick had railed against the US Government’s ‘open hostility’ towards the League, and accused America of having ‘gone out of our way openly to humiliate it and secretly to hamstring it.’ America had used the ‘tremendous influence of our position and power to discourage progress’; allowed ‘partisan politics’ to place the US in an ‘obstructive role’; and had played ‘a small unworthy part’ in challenging a new structure ‘designed to end a system of international chaos…’[141] Writing in The League of Nations News Fosdick fulminated against ‘American Obscurantism’. By standing aloof from world affairs, the US was only ‘winning for herself contempt and even hatred among civilised nations, and a place of moral isolation that is now absolutely complete.’[142]

During this period Fosdick also refined his ideas on international government, publishing The Old Savage in the New Civilisation in 1928, which endorsed ‘a planetary consciousness’ and ‘a collective intelligence.’ Fosdick argued that if nations were to co-exist without conflict then ‘we must have some centralised mechanism, some establishment procedure, by which we can determine the understandings and rules of common life…The assertion of the absolute sovereignty of the state has become in our time the supreme anarchy.’[143]

He also maintained his belief that with much of the planet now ‘joined together in an intricate network of intercourse and commerce’ no nation could stand alone.[144] Fosdick pushed this point repeatedly in a paper ostensibly about the Great Depression, written for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace’s periodical International Conciliation in 1931. The world economy, he wrote, was ‘very sick’, yet new technology and trade had ‘knit the world together in a new kind of unity’, forming a ‘new world…of interdependence and solidarity.’ Underlying this was a ‘vast, intricate network of international credit and finance’, which comprised the ‘nerves of a living organism that embraces the whole world.’[145] For Fosdick the implications were profound and obvious:

You see, do you not, what has happened? In a hundred years, thanks to our machines, the rush of trade and finance has trampled down the old geographical frontiers….We may set up flags and boundary lines but they will be blotted out. We may try to disentangle ourselves from these new relationships, but the attempt will be futile.[146]

Not surprisingly there was only one plausible response – what he called ‘A Fresh Approach’ – to help nations cooperate in a way that would ‘fit the facts of our twentieth century interdependence.’ It would require the ‘voluntary curtailment…of so-called sovereign rights’; the world would have to ‘submit to economic disarmament as well as military disarmament’; and the US would have to become an ‘active participant, in the wider organisation of the world community’, including of course, the League of Nations.[147] The choice was just as stark as that Fosdick had posed in the pages of The Atlantic Monthly eleven years earlier:

Will [humanity] now follow the flag of the old order or the standard of the League of Nations? Under one, the complete breakdown of civilisation and the self-extermination of man are only a matter of time; the other leads to unexplored fields of human cooperation and creative labour.[148]

2.6 The Death of the Prophet

In relentlessly pursuing an American role in the League of Nations, Fosdick did not neglect the source of this scheme, remaining in contact with the ailing Wilson. In April 1922, for instance, Fosdick sent Wilson a summary of the League’s first two years of work, published by its Information Secretariat. Fosdick wrote of his certainty that Wilson must be viewing with ‘keen satisfaction’ the ‘growing prestige and authority of the League.’ Fosdick’s fervour for the League was undiminished: ‘[the League] is establishing itself as the only possible agency for maintaining the world’s peace.’ He also paid homage to the prophet:

I think of you in these hours of vindication with an increasing affection. The point of view which you gave us in the classroom at Princeton I have never forgotten…God is on our side in this business and the future is secure.[149]

Wilson responded in a similar fashion:

The League has indeed become a vital and commanding force and will more and more dominate international relationships. I am thankful that I had something to do with its institution and I am also thankful, my dear fellow, that it has drawn to its service men like yourself in whose ideals and purposes I have perfect confidence.[150]

In October 1923 Wilson wrote to Fosdick asking him to v