A number of months ago I read an article in a Boston publication which aroused my curiosity about whether the Marshall plan is earning our money’s worth of good will. The article charges that, because Congress has set up many independent agencies, there is so much confusion in administration that official estimates of how much we have spent for foreign aid since the war vary all the way from 30 to 93 billion dollars. It also states that there are 200,000 civilians in Federal overseas jobs and points out that that number is about the population of Worcester, Massachusetts.
To me those are startling figures, if true. If we assume that half of the two hundred thousand are stationed in Europe and add to that semi-permanent administrative group, the unpublished number of American Army, Navy and Air; plus the vast hordes of our tourists who fill to overflowing every trans-Atlantic ship and plane of all flags, our Allies may well look upon the present era as an American invasion.
One hears little criticism of the basic idea of strengthening Western Europe against Communist aggression; but we do hear an increasing number ask whether the mass of the people who accept our help feel any deep rooted sense of gratitude; whether some resent our seeming comfort and prosperity in contrast to their privations; whether we may reasonably expect present friends and Allies to stand with us beyond the present crisis. The Soviet shift from ally to foe; the Japanese attack at Pearl Harbor, in spite of the many friends we had in Japan; Italy’s change of sides in two wars; collaborationists’ behaviour in all countries all point to the importance of creating and holding a friendly sentiment among the general public of all friendly nations. We must expect nations to be guided by self interest in the future as in the past. One of our jobs is to convince the world that we are better people to play ball with than those who vilify us and seek our undoing.
Even some of our isolationists are beginning to believe that at present peace will depend largely upon the solidarity of the United Nations. Solidarity is a matter of sentiment, friendship, and trust as well as calculated self interest; not only among statesmen but in the hearts of the mass of the people. While we concede that spiritual values can not be bought, good publicity should increase the number of our friends if our purpose and intention are as worthy as we believe them to be. If, in spite of Soviet vilification, the whole world knew that we are risking bankruptcy and expending our resources for the good of mankind on a scale never attempted before in history, more people abroad would be on our side than are today. Might not a publicity campaign to spread the truth be almost as important as armed strength? We should certainly not hide our light under a bushel. We hear a great deal about our efforts to pierce the Iron Curtain with news broadcasts; but I for one know very little about the details of the Marshall plan or what is being done to inform all of the peoples west of the Iron Curtain what we are doing for them. Radio, movies, newspapers, magazines and books are obvious channels for spreading the word. We also have our citizens who visit Europe whether as Federal employees, armed services, business-men or tourists. They could all serve as deputy diplomats if given necessary facts and advice—what to do and what not to do. The impression they make on the people they visit may some day exert a very important influence.
The winter before last I had a first hand glimpse of a small portion of The American Abroad when my wife and I made a six weeks’ cruise to the Mediterranean on a combination cargo and passenger ship of the American Export Line. We visited Marseille, Genoa, Naples, Leghorn, Piraeus and Alexandria. Our original interest was to visit Egypt and the Nile before we became too old to travel. My slow reaction to an epidemic of flu, which most of our companions threw off in a day or so, showed my age and kept me a prisoner aboard ship when we should have been having a fine time on the Riviera. The Egyptian hotels had already begun to slump from the perfection of British management, the railroads were not up to our standards; the many poor were close to starvation; and brigands raided travellers between Cairo and Alexandria with such boldness that few visitors ventured the journey after dark without an armed guard. We nevertheless thoroughly enjoyed our seven days in Egypt. We felt the spell of the Nile—its dignity, power, mystery and the serenity of an ageless source of life. In reading up on early Egypt during our sea voyage, we did not fail to note that there was no lend-lease and no rehabilitation of the enemy after victory in the days of Egyptian might. Their wars were fought for the ruthless destruction of the enemy, men, women and children; the devastation of his land—orchards, crops and water supply—an interesting contrast to the American ideals of today.
As we steamed into each of our ports of call I watched with great interest for evidence of war damage of the harbor and waterfront and what had been done to repair damages. We found that such an inspection provides a fine sample of the workings of the Marshall plan and visual proof of American aid to Europe. Marseille, Naples, Leghorn, Piraeus, Alexandria—all had been badly hammered. In the harbor of Marseille alone over nine hundred craft, large and small, are said to have been sunk. At the time of our visit all of these craft had been raised, put back in service or broken up for scrap except one large transport, wrecked on the entrance to the breakwater, canted drunkenly on her side—a monument to the hazards of amphibious warfare. In addition to sunken ships, the Nazis had wantonly destroyed all piers, dry docks, wharves and warehouses along the waterfront including the 16th Century harbor and ancient buildings of Vieux Porte which had not been used for centuries for any more war-like service than a refuge for local fishermen. By 1950 practically all damage in all ports except Leghorn had been not only repaired but put in better condition for trade than they had ever been before. Wharves and warehouses have been completely re-designed, rebuilt and equipped with modern passenger and cargo handling arrangements—with a great deal of American money and a great deal of American technical help. The once deserted waterfronts are again seething with activity; ships of many nations are busy loading and unloading with the American Export Lines setting the pace. We had a full cargo going out and an even fuller coming home—a sure index of improving trade conditions in at least some parts of Europe.
Our fellow passengers on the Exochorda, numbering about one hundred, were an interesting example of Americans abroad. About half were on the Government pay roll on their way, in many cases with families to jobs in southern Europe or the Near or Middle East. Some were returning there after a too brief leave of absence at home- Then there were employees of American business, salesmen, missionaries, teachers and just plain sightseers, mostly elderly; some to retrace the ground, in Africa, Italy and France, where their sons had fought. There were a group of about ten scheduled to build and operate an oil refinery in the Trieste area and to organize schools for native artisans and operators. There were a group of about six well-behaved Mormon missionary youths, who at first kept pretty well to themselves, but later let it be known that their destination was Teheran where they hoped to teach American farming methods to the Persians. We brought back with us the youtbful head of Standard Oil at Basra. He told us of his struggle to keep American employees well and content in an average daily temperature of 120 degrees, and also of Ibn Saud who, on one occasion, demanded that they build him a railroad across the Arabian desert from sea to sea. His reason for this demand was that if a transcontinental railroad had developed the United States in a few brief years, why should one not develop Arabia? To everyone’s surprise, important mining discoveries, have followed the railroad.
We had a glamourous lady, given to very décolleté gowns, who let it be understood that she was a Czarist Russian Countess, from Argentine, widow of an American and mother of the wife of a State Department official. Her stories of playing in Livadia palace as a child, recent journeys all over the world, including the Far East, operating a publicity bureau in Argentine were the subject of a good deal of conjecture.
We had not a single passenger who could be considered an objectionable companion on board ship or an offensive show-off on shore. It was probably not an average crowd of tourists because a cargo carrier, even when her passenger accommodations are superior, does not attract those who seek a brief contact with the official and social elite, or luxury and a touch of gay life. Ours were a serious minded group; but none of us knew any of the details of the Marshall plan; how much we are giving away; how much we are lending; what food and war supplies we are providing. If we had been given a small pamphlet with some of that data before sailing, we would have been much more intelligent representatives of our country.
Although our fellow passengers were well behaved on shore, we read and heard disturbing stories of the bad impression made by some of our armed forces, civil representatives, business men, congressmen and tourists; stories of arrogant demands for preferential treatment in return for the help our country is giving; gross disregard of the social and religious sensibilities of the populace; discourtesy and bad manners: bad taste in what to wear and where to wear it, as exemplified by some American young "omen strolling down the Champs Élysés or Bond Street with dungaree trouser rolled to the knee and shirt tail outside: movies and literature that give many of our Allies reason to believe that we are a nation of gangsters and crooks.
The important question is, “What can we do about it?” It is probably too much to hope that we can reform our movies or some of our worst literature, but I suggest that we can improve the behaviour of some of our people who go abroad by convincing them of the importance to the nation of making friends; urging upon them their personal responsibility to help and telling them some basic principles of tactful behaviour. I have watched this practice work and grow in the Navy during the past half century. Despite the popular idea of the behaviour of the sailor on shore, those of us who have lived through the growing pains of our naval expansion realize that there are no more generous, thoughtful, kindly people in the world than our naval personnel when properly directed. The Navy has had more experience in getting along with people in foreign parts than any other department of Government except State. As a cross section of our people, what we have learned may well apply to all.
I offer the following personal experience in support.
In the summer of 1899, at the age of seventeen, I was what was then known as Cadet third class at the U. S. Naval Academy and a royal yardman on the U.S.S. Monongahela —a full rigged ship without any auxiliary whatever to help out her sail power. Plymouth, England, was the port of call for our summer training cruise. We ran into some bad weather in the English Channel during which all hands took quite a beating, but learned a lot about seamanship in a very short time. There were plenty of sailing ships in trade in those days and we passed some making very heavy weather and others flying signals of distress. We were proud of our Skipper when he entered the harbour of Plymouth in a half gale with double reefed topsails, stood boldly up to an inshore anchorage, backed headsails, let go the hook and doused sail—all in one smart exhibition of good seamanship. He was complimented by British naval authority when he exchanged calls. As we went about the city sight-seeing, some of the townspeople had a kind word for us, too. They had stood on the Mall to watch us enter, just as, three hundred years before, the populace had watched Drake sail away to battle after his interrupted game of bowls.
In the compulsory sight-seeing in London, while I was stirred to visit the scenes of Dickens, Scott, and G. A. Henty, I must confess that one of my most vivid recollections of London is being treated to my first glass of beer by a friendly Member of Parliament, who, without prearrangement took a number of us to the floor of both Houses to listen briefly to debate and then gave us refreshment on the Terrace overlooking the Thames. My glass of beer emboldened me to buy a pipe which I had eyed covetously in a tobacconist’s window each morning of our stay, as the price was almost prohibitive. Needless to say, both beer and tobacco were forbidden fruit for midshipmen.
When we sailed for home via Madeira, most of us felt that the English are a very nice lot of people despite 1812 and the Revolutionary War. We also felt we had helped the entente cordiale by reasonably good behaviour and party manners.
After being handed my diploma by Teddy Roosevelt three years later with a rousing appeal to carry the flag proudly, I was ordered to the Mediterranean Squadron for duty. The ships were usually scattered to various ports for the winter and only joined together each summer for a cruise to the British Isles and the Baltic. It was a rather demoralizing life for all hands. We had only the most perfunctory drills and little work was done beyond spit and polish. Ships of other navies were no more strenuous than we and there was a great deal of time wasted in exchanging calls and rather boisterous wardroom dinners. Our ship was anchored a lot of the time in Villefranche—only twenty miles from Monte Carlo where Schwab of U. S. Steel was becoming notorious for breaking the bank. We tried to help him whenever enough credit accumulated on the books to finance a trip ashore.
Monte Carlo was quite an experience in those days. We rubbed elbows with some very rich and a good many very worthless aristocrats of Europe, who little realized they were having their last fling. Russians, Germans, French, Italians, English vied feverishly for the smiles of Lady Luck. They dressed smartly and the women were loaded down with jewelry. They played for heavy stakes and accepted gains or losses with well bred hauteur. Those were the lush days of the American millionaires, some of whom tried, as Mr. Duveen tells us, to buy up the art treasures of Europe, while others were very much in evidence at places like Monte Carlo. The Europeans eyed the behaviour of some of our nouveau riche with tolerant condescension. They rated us as a young, uncouth lot of people whose taste and manners might be expected to improve as we grew older and wiser. I remember one English lady said to me:—“I know the English and Americans are blood cousins and all that; but some of us wonder why you keep your ships in our harbors. You have nothing to protect here.” I had often wondered about that myself and I had no ready answer except to mumble something about “showing the flag”—an expression frequently used at the time by both the Kaiser and T.R.
At the turn of the century the crews of all navies behaved pretty badly on shore. The police of all seaports expected near riots and pitched battles between one crew and another or between seamen and townsmen. A good brawl was the measure of a successful liberty. The British and Russians were just as bad. Only the Germans made any serious effort at that time to keep their crews in hand on shore.
More than half of our enlisted men were foreign born seamen who liked to fight and willingly served any flag that fed and clothed them and paid the prevailing wage. They usually worked conscientiously aboard ship until they’d saved enough money for a rough liberty. A gang would then leave together for mutual protection; get roaring drunk, establish themselves in the red light district, and deliberately over stay their leave until their money was gone or they got underground word that they were about to be declared deserters. They would stoically accept the precribed punishment—court martial; bread and water; double irons; loss of pay—only to wait the time when they could do it all over again. Some of our American born seamen fell under the spell of these illiterate, lusty adventurers; but for the most part our own men tried hard for a good record, tried to learn a trade, and saved money to set themselves up ashore when they left the naval service.
The big sporting event in all navies in those days was a boat race. A ship with a winning crew was a target for challenge by ships of all nations. The accepted procedure required the challenging boat’s crew to toss oars under the bows of the defender. It was usually done in the morning watch, before colors, when most of the crew were on deck scrubbing clothes. There was great excitement. All hands rushed to the rail to shout defiance at the challenger and size up the performance of boat and crew. A lot of horse trading followed by leading members of the ship’s company—the choice of boats, the length of race, the course, the date and time. Although betting was forbidden, it was usually heavy and carried on by mysterious figures who came aboard at night carrying very heavy black bags while the officer of the deck turned his back. After the race there was great rejoicing on the winning ship and corresponding depression on the loser. As athletic officer of the Albany during my first year of sea duty, I had the good fortune to turn out a winning crew. I had to be up at daylight every morning, rout out the boats crew, put them through a progressively trying workout, and keep them from breaking training. After the race our entire boat’s crew left as a body on forty- eight hours’ leave. Not one then came back for ten days—the dead line for desertion. The Skipper was furious, as we needed every man to scrape a very foul bottom in a French drydock. The eventual return was dramatic. We were all at work over the side when the culprits, a drunken, reeling, howling, group, followed their leader hazardously along the open edge of the drydock. Each seemed about to plunge to his doom at the bottom of the dock. It was like watching a dozen Harold Lloyds balance on a ten story window sill. But they all made it safely and staggered down the gang plank to the deck where the Skipper, Exec., all of the masters-at-arms, and some of the Marine Guard glared and stood ready to stow them in the brig. I stood at one side and glared also, but my dignity was knocked into a cocked hat when Red Brewer, the stroke oar and ring leader, a great brute of a man, lurched into me, threw his arms around my neck, and shouted at the top of his husky lungs, “Well, Brownie, we beat them, didn’t we!”
However, by World War I the U. S. Navy had undergone many changes. We had moved up from a bad fifth to third place in Jane’s rating of sea power. In 1908 T.R. sent the fleet around the world to demonstrate our mobility. The foreign element in our crews had been completely replaced by American citizens, most of whom were native born. The Navy was among the first to benefit by the national improvement of our public school system. Many of our recruits were high school graduates and practically all had had a year or more of high school. All could learn by reading in a few hours what had taken weeks to teach orally to the man who made a cross as his signature. Our new recruits quickly absorbed a sense of personal responsibility to his ship and country. During the war they were reasonably well behaved on shore; fraternized with our Allies and, except for an occasional row in Ireland about girls, succeeded in keeping out of trouble.
After the war bad feeling developed between our crews and the British armed forces. At Gibraltar practically every ship that passed through for a time had trouble with British patrols. Some of the bad feeling was fanned by the British press which was having a fine time calling us “Uncle Shylock;” but usually the trouble started after a few drinks with an argument about who won the war. It become a general naval policy to warn our men to avoid the whole subject, pointing out to them that we must concede in all fairness that our Allies had held the line while we prepared, that they had suffered more than we had and that it was our strength added to theirs that finally turned the tide. We did not ask them to be meeching about it or to run away from a fight that was thrust on them. We ordered them not to go about boasting that we had won the war. This policy reduced casualties, but did not effect a cure.
When our Fleet visited Australia in ’25, we were received with tremendous enthusiasm because our visit was interpreted as a warning to Japan that we would stand by Australia if the Japs got tough. In spite of this friendly atmosphere some of our crews became involved in pitched battles with the young men of Melbourne in the very heart of the city. They were destroyer men and the Commander of Destroyers was a strict and inflexible disciplinarian. He ordered me, his Chief of Staff, to take precautions that nothing of the kind should occur in New Zealand, where we were to visit on our way home—one squadron going to Dunedin and the other to Christ Church, while we on the flagship went to still another port. I selected two very able senior captains to command the shore patrols—one a lawyer and the other, Jonas Ingram, one of our most famous athletes. I passed the word on to them they would be held personally responsible for results. The lawyer got results by threatening dire punishment. Jonas got results by what he called “preventive” methods. With a large patrol, he personally made the rounds of some very tough waterfront bars at frequent intervals. Whenever he found one of our men a little unsteady on his feet or boisterous, he was sent back to his ship under guard. The plan worked fine until the night before sailing when, in the enthusiasm of farewells, so many had to be escorted to safety that all the escorts were used up before the rounds were completed. As it was within a few minutes of closing time for all bars, Jonas kept on by himself to complete his inspection. He was within a block of one of the toughest spots when a whole gang of very drunken longshoremen surged out to the sidewalk as though propelled by the bar keeper. Jonas sensed trouble ahead for his too conspicuous patrol uniform and wisely crossed to the other side of the street as the mob moved in his direction. He had gotten almost opposite them when the biggest and huskiest surged across in front of him, blocked the way in a truculent posture and demanded—“Who won the War, Yank?” In his anger at being cornered, Jonas was inspired to answer, “New Zealand, you so-and- so.” The mob shouted with delight and yelled, “That’s one on you, Bill.” Bill decided it was one on him too, joined his fellows, and Jonas continued on his way.
The next time I visited Europe on a man- of-war was in the summer of ’36 and ’37, when I had command of the Training Squadron. There were three battleships on the cruise with about a thousand men on each ship and two entire classes of midshipmen. We made good behaviour on shore a dominant theme for all instruction. Sight-seeing opportunities were carefully developed for midshipmen and men. It was pointed out to them by their Captains, Division Officers, ships’ paper, and special orders that they were being sent abroad as emissaries of their country: that the country would be judged by their behaviour. We urged them to be responsible not only for what they did themselves but also for any shipmates who got out of line. We did not ask them to report offenders but to put corrective heat on themselves. The results were excellent. I do not recall a single serious report against any midshipman or enlisted man. The most affirmative report came to me from the Commandant of the Dockyard at Portsmouth, England, where we spent ten days. Admiral Sir John Kelly was a well known figure throughout the British Empire. He was known as a strict disciplinarian and was selected to settle a mutiny in the British Navy, which he did in very short order— a year or so before our visit I was warned that he was a hard man to get along with and urged not to have a chip on my shoulder. Thanks to this warning we got along in complete harmony and when we left he said to me, in effect:—“Before you go I must tell you that I keep very close tabs on the behaviour of visiting ships. Information comes to me not only from my own police but from townspeople and tradespeople, of whom many are subsidized. The report on your people is practically perfect. It is a matter of general comment that they are polite, considerate, and most pleasant visitors. If I thought a single British ship could behave as well in one of your ports as your entire squadron has done, I would be even prouder of the British Navy than I an' today.”
On Sir John’s evidence I rest my case. If five thousand young Americans respond so well to appeals to their sense of personal responsibility, may we not expect equally good results from civilian employees, men of all armed services, and most of our tourists and businessmen?
Would it not help if our Government, through its various agencies would:
1. Keep before the American public and the people of Western Europe the truth as to how much we have given or loaned in money and supplies to each foreign country.
2. Urge each of our citizens who goes abroad to recognize his opportunity to serve the United States as an unofficial diplomat to create good will.
3. Provide each American traveler with a carefully thought out pamphlet to serve as a guide while abroad. Such a pamphlet, it seems to me, should give the basic facts of what we have done, plan to do, and why. It should deprecate boastfulness and warn of some of the pitfalls in diplomacy that may confront the visitor abroad. It should stress consideration of the sensibilities of others and the value of plain, ordinary courtesy and good manners.