At the outset of the war in Europe John Foster Dulles became entangled in the increasingly rancorous controversy which raged between interventionist and noninterventionist clergymen in the United States. In a nationally broadcasted radio message on 8 September 1939, a few days after Britain and France had declared war on Germany, George A. Buttrick, the president of the FCC, asked his audience to support a policy of neutrality:

We must be neutral from high and sacrificial motives - not for physical safety, not in an attempt to maintain an impossible isolation from world problems, assuredly not for commercial gain, but rather because we know that war is futile and because we are eager through reconciliation to build a kindlier world.

Immediately following the broadcast, the FCC issued a statement entitled 'The American Churches and the European War,' which castigated war as 'an evil thing contrary to the mind of Christ'. The United States government was again urged strongly to stay out of war. Essentially in agreement with the FCC the National Peace Conference sent a similar message to the President a few days later. By the end of September 1939 The Christian Century claimed euphorically that most American churches were opposed to war. The editor Charles Clayton Morrison still feared, however, that the churches may succumb to the mounting forces of a virulent interventionism, as they had done in 1917. To counteract militarist influences, he decided to publish a serialized version of Ray Abrams' Preachers Present Arms, which denounced Protestant jingoism during the First World War. On October 18, 1939 the executive committee of the FCC commended President Roosevelt in a letter for his efforts to keep the country out of the conflict and implored him to co-operate to the best of his abilities with other nations in restoring peace. Roosevelt was asked to consider an internationalist solution to the problem of war: 'We urge the development of some form of world order,' the letter concluded, 'in which certain aspects of the sovereignty of the individual state would be limited in the interests of the world community.

Soon, however, dark clouds rose on the horizon which cast an ominous shadow over the pacifist cause of the churches. Reinhold Niebuhr showed first signs of uneasiness about noninterventionism in his Gifford Lectures in Scotland at the end of 1939. Deeply concerned about the threat to democracy caused by the American refusal to help Britain and France in its struggles against the Nazis, he authored a series of articles, which he called 'Leaves from the Notebook of a War-Bound American.' He passionately denounced the evil of totalitarianism which seemed unstoppable on its march to conquer the world. On the eve of his return to the United States in early 1940, Niebuhr began to call for America's entry into the war.

Standing at the helm of the interventionist faction within the FCC which was steadily gaining in popularity among Church leaders, Niebuhr issued a public statement, entitled 'The American Churches and the International Situation.' Urging the churches to refrain from war hysteria, Niebuhr contended that to remain neutral about the European conflict would not be in America's best interest, since it was more than a battle between competing power blocks. There was a fundamental moral difference between the Axis powers' lust for conquest and the Finns' heroic defence of their country against the Russian aggressor. America's war objective should be to preserve freedom which would suffer a fatal blow everywhere in the case of an Axis victory. At that time Niebuhr was not yet convinced that a new world order would arise out of the ashes of the old, once hostilities had ceased. The statement was endorsed by thirty-two prominent Church leaders. Dulles was one of the signatories. Shortly after the statement was made public, John Foster freely admitted to Quincy Wright that he had reluctantly appended his name to the document. On the question of war guilt his views deviated substantially from those expressed in the statement. He believed that the Allies were just as responsible as the Axis Powers for causing the outbreak of hostilities. The western democracies had failed to diffuse a volatile situation in the years leading up to the war in that they had prevented peaceful change from taking place in international affairs. Dulles contended, furthermore, that the moral issue was hardly as one-sided as the statement made it out to be. In his view the European conflict showed the classical signs of a clash between competing imperialisms.

Dulles was never easily intimidated or swayed to change his position if he was certain of its expediency in achieving his goals. Sometimes, however, he shifted the emphasis of his argumentation from one aspect to another to make a more convincing case for his position. While he had emphasised in late 1939 that the western democracies were equally to blame for causing the war, because they did not allow the so-called >have not' powers to meet their legitimate needs, he began to stress the futility of force in solving international conflicts in the early 1940s. Refuting some claims of Granville Clark's peace proposal, he contended that the author placed too much credence on the effectiveness of force. 'I do not think peace is maintained primarily by force, but rather by the creation of sound economic conditions, so that men of violence are kept in the minority instead of becoming the leaders of great mass revolts.' Three days later in conversation with a friend he stated essentially the same opinion: 'I have always felt that the measure of force necessary to maintain peace was the measure of the unsoundness of the social order.

In April 1940 Dulles rejected outright the argument that the United States should assist Britain and France with everything short of war. His rationale was that a nation should refrain from putting its prestige on the line if it did not possess adequate means to protect it. He was certain that the American people would resist the decision to send its armies to Europe merely to preserve the western democracies. A victory of Nazi Germany would be deplorable, to be sure, but it would not match the negative effects of war itself which the United States would suffer. 'The greatest menace ... is war itself, and the means necessary to win a modern war.' Dulles surprisingly argued in his letter to Thomas Debevoise that it may not be so tragic to let Britain and France fall to the Germans, if they were not strong enough to maintain their own political independence. The United States could win the war for them, but this would be only a temporary solution at best to guarantee their survival.

In early May 1940, the Nazi victories in Scandinavia threatened a defeat of the Allies. The interventionist faction within the FCC, led by Reinhold Niebuhr and Henry P. Van Dusen, became increasingly concerned and issued another statement urging the American government to sustain the British and the French in their struggle. Still cautious in demanding a declaration of war against Germany, they called for moral and material support. Nearly all of those who had signed the January statement appended their signatures again with the notable exception of John Foster Dulles. He steadfastly refused to sign, even after Van Dusen implored him in a telegram to change his mind. A personal petition from Henry Sloane Coffin and an earnest message from William Adams Brown were greeted with the same negative response.

If the interventionist clergymen chafed over John Foster's seeming betrayal, the pacific noninterventionists were delighted. A day after Dulles' refusal to sign the statement had become known, Walter W. Van Kirk, secretary of the FCC's Department of International Justice and Goodwill and a co-member of the Council on Foreign Relations, sent him a letter. 'I can>'t tell you how grateful I am for your view,' wrote Van Kirk. 'I had expected that in a period of international stress there would be a tendency on the part of some of our preachers to stand where most of them had stood in 1917-1918. I had not supposed, however, that the drift would set in so quickly.' This letter was followed by other communications from clergymen commending Dulles in similar terms for his principled stance. Those who applauded his decision, however, were soon disappointed, when Dulles also refused to endorse the noninterventionist manifesto. In late May, George A. Buttrick, Harry Emerson Fosdick, and Ralph Sockman had published a refutation of the Niebuhr-Van Dusen declaration which they wanted him to sign. Although sympathising with the noninterventionists during the early phase of the war, Dulles was careful to keep himself out of the controversy because he felt that neither group represented his own position adequately. He adopted a quasi-isolationist position while remaining an internationalist at heart. In his speech at the National Council of the Y.M.C.A. in Detroit, on October 28, 1939, he stated: 'I dislike isolation, but I prefer it to identification with a senseless repetition of the cyclical struggle between the dynamic and static forces of the world ... The fundamental fact is that the national system of wholly independent sovereign states is completing its cycle of usefulness.' Thus he saw 'neither in the underlying causes of the war, nor its long range objectives, any reason for the United States becoming a participant in the war.' 'Were we now to act,' he maintained, 'it would be to reaffirm an international order which by its very nature is self-destructive and a breeder of violent revolts.'

The champion of isolationism, Charles A. Lindbergh, came out in public to demand a modus vivendi with Hitler, and Dulles supported him. In a personal letter he commended the famous aviator for his isolationist stance:

I am very glad you spoke as you did. I do not agree with everything that you said, but I do agree with the result, and I feel that there is grave danger that, under the influence of emotion, we will decide upon a national policy which is quite the reverse of what we had more or less agreed upon when we were thinking clearly.

In a gesture of gratitude, Dulles offered his legal services to Lindbergh during the incorporation of the America First Committee (AFC). It is rather doubtful, however, that Dulles ever concurred unreservedly with the isolationist position of the AFC. In fact, he was annoyed by critics who associated him publicly with Lindbergh's organisation. One of the reasons he gave for refusing to become an AFC member sheds some light on at least one aspect which caused him to seek a mediating position between the interventionists and isolationists.

I am making my first interest in these matters my work with the Federal Council of Churches, where I have just become Chairman of an important committee they are setting up to study international relations. My ability to achieve the long range objectives I have in mind and my influence with the group would be hurt if I were publicly identified with one or another of the groups actively involved in the current phases of the problem.

Thus, his temporary involvement in the isolationist movement must be seen simply as a matter of expediency, supporting the AFC as long as the consequences of its activities coincided with his own goals of preserving American neutrality prior to Pearl Harbor. He was too much of an internationalist to throw in his lot with a group of conservative nationalists who were almost completely at variance with him ideologically. Ronald W. Pruessen rightly observes that the epithet 'Isolationist' is a label that simply fails to stick. Dulles intimated at times that, under certain circumstances, he would discard isolationist sentiments:

I am not an "isolationist", indeed I have generally been called an "internationalist" ... I would not oppose affirmative action if our policy were based upon a genuine understanding of the causes of the present crisis and was intelligently designed to achieve a world order whereby recurrent crises might hereafter be avoided.

Commenting on the interventionist controversy in the United States a quarter century earlier, he frankly admitted that he had supported Wilson's war effort: 'I was willing and eager to see the United States go into the World War under the leadership of Wilson. I felt that he had perceived and might correct the inherent defects in our present world system.' In a letter to William E. Borah, who chaired a Senate committee, investigating infringements of the neutrality legislation, Dulles explained why he had refused to testify in favour of the isolationist movement:

My general feeling is that if the world is bound into a cycle of recurrent violence, then I should like to see the United States avoid involvement. I fear this is the situation in Europe today. However, I am "isolationist" only in this sense and believe that if any program could be evolved which would break the cycle and give some promise of re-establishing a real era of peace rather than mere armistice, then we should play our part [in entering the war].

Arguing that isolationism is untenable in an interdependent world, Dulles told Arthur Sulzberger, publisher of the New York Times, that he rejected the 'old-time nationalistic slogans like "America First" or "Defend America".' No country could stay in isolation for long and prosper. Dulles thus confounded some of his critics, such as James P. Warburg and Wendell Willkie, who attacked him openly for his alleged isolationist sentiments. Unable to silence his political detractors completely, he was repeatedly accused after the war of having weakened the United States' resolve to defeat the Axis powers. Ronald W. Pruessen writes that 'some [critics of Dulles] went on to lambast him for urging a cowardly and irresponsible path on his fellow citizens.'

After the German invasion of France the dispute between the noninterventionists and interventionists within the executive committee of the FCC started to become public knowledge. To abate the embarrassment over its internal division the Church leadership decided to publish a revised declaration working doggedly on a new formula throughout June 1940. In the meantime the executives of Christian agencies in Geneva had formed an International Consultative Group and called on the United States to shoulder its responsibility for freedom in the world. The Group claimed that the possibility of an Allied victory had become remote and Christians everywhere should contemplate the serious consequences of a Nazi Europe. Abhorred by the thought of a German victory, the executive committee of the FCC urged the United States to save basic human values by entering the war. Admittedly this solution would not be a cure-all, only the lesser of two evils. The churches were exhorted to honour the rights of both pacifists and soldiers, to care for war victims regardless of nationality and political ideology, and, above all, to preserve the bonds of ecumenical fellowship across national boundaries. The scale had tipped noticeably in favour of the interventionists in the higher echelons of the FCC. In a letter to William W. Van Kirk Dulles deplored the defeat of the pacifist faction within the Church leadership. He was especially incensed about the portrayal of the Axis Powers as evil personified in contrast to that of the Allies as the righteous defenders of a moral cause. The churches had to bear part of the blame for that misrepresentation.

I am struck by the fact that history shows that in every so-called "Christian" country, in time of war or international stress, the church has uniformly become the hand-maiden of national politics. The church leaders then see the moral issue as identical with the national issue and call upon church members as a matter of religious duty to support its own national leaders as being "right." ... I greatly hoped that in the present crisis the Christians church in this country could avoid concentrating upon the admitted evils elsewhere, slurring over the admitted evils at home and thereby becoming, in my judgment, hypocritical and unChristian.

In his response Van Kirk agreed with Dulles, but admitted regretfully that the noninterventionist faction within the FCC had become a minority. 'It is increasingly clear that my views are not the views of a large number of the members of the executive committee.' Instead of giving in to the opinion of the dominant interventionist faction, the pacifistic clergymen continued the fight for their position. By October 1940 the two sides had run into serious disagreements with one another and had reached a deadlock. It was feared that the public image of the FCC would suffer lasting damage. To restore a modicum of unity, at least on the surface, an informal meeting was convened at Dulles' home. Spokesmen of both points of view were in attendance. The noninterventionist faction was represented by Henry Atkinson, Harry Emerson Fosdick, William W. Van Kirk, and Roswell P. Barnes. Their counterparts were Henry Sloane Coffin, William Adams Brown, and Samuel McCrea Cavert. Some men were also present who preferred to take a neutral posture. They were A. L. Warnshuis, H. A. Hatch, J.A. Franklin, and A. K. Chalmers. Meanwhile, Van Dusen and Niebuhr on the interventionist side and Palmer, Buttrick, and Morrison on the other chose to remain absent.

Dulles was asked by those present to draft a statement which would emphasise the essential unity of the churches despite divisive issues which remained unresolved. On 18 October 1940 Dulles passed the statement on to the entire executive committee of the FCC. Subsequently, he wrote a position paper based on the comments he received from the Church leadership and called it 'The American Churches and the International Situation'. The main premise of the paper was that Christians should rise above the hatreds of war in order to preserve the bonds of a world-wide fellowship of churches. Furthermore, they should show to the world the type of repentance and humility which distinguished their belief in the spiritual supremacy of God rather than the state. On December 10-13, 1940 at the biennial meeting of the FCC in Atlantic City the Department of International Justice and Goodwill presented the paper to the six hundred delegates in attendance who endorsed it officially on behalf of the FCC. Many of the delegates lauded it 'as one of the most significant pronouncements of recent years.

As it turned out, the Dulles paper was far less interventionist than the earlier one published in June. The Christian Century, long since the voice of the noninterventionists, praised it as a 'remarkable' essay which 'will stand for a long time as conclusive evidence that as of December 1940, the churches of this nation still retained their sanity, and what is more, their Christian faith in God as reconciling love.' Apparently, Dulles chipped in his lot discreetly with the noninterventionists. As could be expected, the interventionists were rather displeased. In February 1941, they published the first issue of Christianity and Crisis under the editorship of Reinhold Niebuhr to voice their opinions. The publication cost of the journal was defrayed by a group of prominent clergymen belonging to the interventionist faction.

In March, 1941, Bishop Henry Hobson launched his interventionist Fight for Freedom Committee. Its sponsors listed several executives of the FCC who were colleagues of Dulles. Earlier, Albert W. Palmer had formed the Ministers No War Committee and initiated a Churchmen's Campaign for Peace through Mediation. The purpose of the program was to recruit pastors for the noninterventionist cause.

Eventually, in March 1941, when Roosevelt signed the Lend-Lease Act, the pretended neutrality of America was deliberately set aside in support of the Allies. The hawks and doves within the FCC adjusted their arguments accordingly. The interventionists prepared a statement of the FCC pressing the United States for an early declaration of war. The noninterventionists, reconciling themselves to the thought of America's inevitable entry into the conflict, turned their attention to formulating specific war objectives, calling them 'peace aims'.

Dulles, by now chairman of the FCC Commission on a Just and Durable Peace, began immediately to articulate the conceptual framework of a peace settlement which meshed perfectly with his expertise in broad policy questions. A noticeable change had taken place at the North American Ecumenical Conference in Toronto, to which Dulles had been invited. The hawks and doves still clashed on occasion, but they managed to calm their tempers and reach broad agreements whenever the discussion shifted to peace aims. 'The ecumenical churchmen at Toronto,' writes Albert N. Keim, 'while differing sharply on the matter of involvement in the war, were amazingly united in their vision of what constituted a desirable international order. They were, at the risk of overgeneralization, basically Wilsonian internationalists, and that pleased Dulles.' John Foster was relieved to see that the wounds of the interventionist controversy were finally healing. William W. Van Kirk also recognized the beneficial influence of the Commission on a Just and Durable Peace in uniting the Church leadership to pursue a common goal. In a memorandum to Samuel M. Cavert, his superior at the FCC, he stated that 'the persons whom I have named broadly represent varying views. Given a fair amount of statesmanship, it should be possible for us, through a Commission of this kind, to prevent an unfortunate division within our ranks in times like these.'

Henry P. Van Dusen, one of the leaders of the interventionist camp, noted in 1942, after the successful conclusion of the National Study Conference at Delaware, Ohio, that the representatives of American Protestantism, who until three months ago had been bitterly divided, found a consensus on important proposals for a postwar world. He believed that reconciling the hawks and doves with each other and putting them to work on long range peace issues was one of the best contributions of the Commission on a Just and Durable Peace. Dulles deserved much of the credit for this result. He devised an organisational structure which allowed the different groups to come together and deliberate on a mutually agreeable subject, i.e., the building of the Kingdom of God on earth.

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© 2005 Martin Erdmann