ALL IN A LIFE-TIME
[Illustration: HENRY MORGENTHAU]
ALL IN A LIFE-TIME
BY
HENRY MORGENTHAU
IN COLLABORATION WITH
FRENCH STROTHER
[Illustration]
ILLUSTRATIONS
FROM
PHOTOGRAPHS
GARDEN CITY NEW YORK
DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
1922
COPYRIGHT, 1921, 1922, BY
DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, INCLUDING THAT OF TRANSLATION
INTO FOREIGN LANGUAGES, INCLUDING THE SCANDINAVIAN
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES
AT
THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS, GARDEN CITY, N. Y.
_First Edition_
TO
MY DEVOTED COMPANION
MY WIFE
WHO ORIGINATED SOME,
AND STIMULATED ALL,
OF MY BEST ENDEAVOURS
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. NEW WORLDS FOR OLD 1
II. SCHOOL DAYS 7
III. APPRENTICED TO THE LAW 18
IV. REAL ESTATE 39
V. FINANCE 63
VI. SOCIAL SERVICE 94
VII. EARLY POLITICAL EXPERIENCES 109
VIII. MY ENTRANCE INTO NATIONAL POLITICS 128
IX. THE CAMPAIGN OF 1912 150
X. THE SOCIAL SIDE OF CONSTANTINOPLE 174
XI. MY TRIP TO THE HOLY LAND 211
XII. THE CAMPAIGN OF 1916 234
XIII. MY MEETINGS WITH JOFFRE, HAIG, CURRIE, AND PERSHING 249
XIV. JOHN PURROY MITCHEL 278
XV. A HECTIC FORTNIGHT--AND OTHERS 287
XVI. THE INTERNATIONAL RED CROSS 310
XVII. THE PEACE CONFERENCE 322
XVIII. MY MISSION TO POLAND 348
XIX. ZIONISM A SURRENDER, NOT A SOLUTION 385
APPENDIX 407
INDEX 441
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Henry Morgenthau _Frontispiece_
FACING PAGE
Mr. Morgenthau playfully refers to this picture as
the Morgenthau dynasty 54
Mr. Morgenthau with Theodore Roosevelt, Charles
E. Hughes, Oscar Straus, and other distinguished
citizens 118
Mr. Morgenthau as one of the group of financiers,
doctors, and sociologists who organized the international
association of Red Cross societies 267
Ignace Paderewski, Premier of Poland, and her representative
at Paris 358
Joseph Pilsudski, Chief of State of Poland, who was
not, at first, in sympathy with the American
Mission 374
Rabbi Rubenstein, a leader of the Jewish community
at Vilna 390
ALL IN A LIFE-TIME
CHAPTER I
NEW WORLDS FOR OLD
I was born in 1856, at Mannheim, in the Grand Duchy of Baden. That was
the old Germany, very different from the Prussianized empire with which
America was to go to war sixty years later, and very different again
from the bustling life of the western world to which I was to be
introduced so soon and in which I was to play a part unlike anything
which my most fanciful dreams ever pictured.
Indeed, those were days of idyllic simplicity in South Germany and
especially in that little city on the Rhine. The life of the people was
best expressed by a word that was forever on their lips, _gemütlich_,
that almost untranslatable word that implies contentment, ease, and
satisfaction, all in one. It was a time of peace and fruitful industry
and quiet enjoyment. The highest pleasure of the children was netting
butterflies in the sunny fields; the great events of youth were the song
festivals and public exhibitions of the “Turners” and walking excursions
into the country; the recreation of the elders was at little tables in
the public gardens, where, while the band played good music and the
youngsters romped from chair to chair, the women plied their knitting
needles over endless cups of coffee, and the men smoked their pipes and
sipped their beer and talked of art and philosophy--of everything in the
world, except world politics and world war.
To us children who had seen no larger city, but had visited many small
villages in the neighbourhood, Mannheim seemed quite an important town.
It was at the point where the Neckar flows into the Rhine, and as this
river flowed through the Odenwald, it constantly brought big loads of
lumber and also many bushels of grain to Mannheim, which had become a
distributing centre for various cereals and lumber, and was also a great
tobacco centre. My father had cigar factories at Mannheim and also in
Lorsch and Heppenheim and sometimes employed as many as a thousand
hands. Nevertheless, the entire population of Mannheim was scarcely
21,000, and the thoughts of most of its inhabitants were bent on the
sober concerns of their every-day struggles and on raising their large
families, without ambition for great riches or hope of higher place.
None but the nobles dreamed of such grandeur as a carriage and pair; the
successful tradesman only occasionally gratified a modest love of
display or travel by hiring a barouche for a drive through the hop
fields and tobacco patches surrounding the city to one of the near-by
villages. Those whose mental powers were of a superior order exercised
them in a keen appreciation of poetry, music, and the drama; Schiller
and Goethe were their demi-gods, Mozart and Beethoven their companions
of the spirit. The Grand Duke’s fatherly devotion to his subjects’
welfare had won him their filial affection; with political matters they
concerned themselves almost not at all.
My childhood recollections reflect the quiet colours of this atmosphere.
My father was prosperous, and our home was blessed by the comforts and
little elegancies that his means made possible; it shared in the
artistic interests of the community by virtue both of his interest in
the theatre and my mother’s passion for the best in literature and
music. I was the ninth of eleven living children, and I recall the
visits of the music teachers who gave my sisters lessons on the piano
and taught my eldest brother to play the violin. We children learned by
heart the poems of Goethe and Schiller and shared the pride of all
Mannheimers that the latter poet had once lived in our city and that his
play, “The Robbers,” was first produced at our Stadt Theatre.
Those who like to reflect upon the smallness of the world will find it
amusing to read that among the various friends of my family were quite a
few with whom we are now on the most cordial relations in New York. Our
physician was Dr. Gutherz, one of whose daughters married my neighbour,
Nathan Straus. Their son and mine are intimate friends, and, in turn,
their sons, Nathan 3d and Henry 3d, are now playmates in Central Park.
Among such associations the first ten years of my life were passed. We
studied hard, but we played hard, too. Nor were our muscles forgotten:
we were given regular exercises, and great was my pride when I passed
the “swimming test” one summer’s day, by holding my own for the
prescribed half hour against the Rhine current and so winning the right
to wear the magic letters R. S.--“Rhine-Swimmer”--on my bathing suit.
Life was indeed gemütlich in the Mannheim of that period.
It was not long, however, before the faraway world of America began to
knock at our quiet door. A brother of my father had joined the gold rush
to the Pacific and settled in San Francisco; he wrote us tales of the
wild, free life of California, its adventures and its wealth. Strange
gifts came back from him--a cane for the Grand Duke, its head a piece of
gold-bearing quartz; for us children queer mementoes of an existence
that seemed all romance. From time to time, this “Gold-Uncle,” as we
called him, gave American friends touring Europe letters of introduction
to my father, and these visitors enhanced the charm of the United
States. One such especially filled our minds with narratives of easily
won riches; Captain Richardson, a bearded Forty-niner, whose accounts of
the land of opportunity were so much more moving than our fairy tales as
to affect even my father’s mature fancy.
For my father heard them at a moment when, by an odd coincidence, an act
of the American Congress had caused him great damage. In 1862 a tariff
had been enacted by the United States which greatly increased the duty
on cigars. For many years the largest part of his production had been
exported to the United States. Father had a representative in New York,
and his brother in San Francisco attended to the distribution on the
Pacific Coast--they both had urged him to rush over all the cigars he
could and land them before the law should go into effect. Unfortunately,
the slow freighter that carried the last and biggest shipment arrived
one day too late. Had she docked in time, my life might have been spent
differently. That day’s delay meant the difference between profit and
disaster to my father; the cigars, which, when duty free, would have
yielded him a good return, were a dead loss when to their cost was added
the burden of the new tariff charges. These changes in any event would
have compelled him to seek a new market, as they closed America forever
to goods of the cheap grade of German tobacco. That might have been
arranged, but when the necessity to seek new fields was coupled with the
crushing loss sustained upon this shipment, his finances were so
weakened that he realized he would have to start afresh and on a smaller
scale.
This was a heavy blow to the pride of a man who had achieved a great
business success and was a leading citizen in his community. The
instinct to seek another field for the fresh start was fortified by the
stories of opportunity in the land whose laws had just dealt the blow.
He resolved to emigrate to America.
I remember vividly the excitement in our household that was provoked by
this momentous decision. Whatever may have been the doubts and
heartburnings of our parents, to us children all was a joyous vista. We
were happy at the thought of travelling to that far land of golden
promise and strange people; we had visions only of adventure, and we
were the envy of our playmates who were not to share with us the voyage
across the Atlantic Ocean or the excitement of life in America.
The two eldest brothers and one of my sisters went ahead of us and
established a home in Brooklyn. They wrote back their first impressions
of New York; its great buildings and its crowded wharves; its masses of
busy people hastening through the maze of streets and the novelty (to
us) of horse cars pulled through the streets on railroad tracks. These
letters gave us fresh thrills of emotion and new material for our active
fancies. Then my father abandoned his now unprofitable business, sold
his factories and home, packed our household goods and furniture, and
possessed of about thirty thousand dollars in cash--all that remained of
his fortune--led his wife and remaining eight children upon the
expedition.
I well remember the journey down the Rhine to Cologne, where we visited
the beautiful cathedral before we took the train to Bremen; the solemn
interview in the latter city at the offices of the North German Lloyd,
where the last formalities were disposed of; and finally settling in our
cabins of the slow old steamer _Hermann_ as she put forth on her way
across the wide Atlantic.
My memories of the eleven-day voyage itself are rather vague. I recall
playing around the deck with the other family of children on the ship.
The daughter of one of those little playmates is now conducting a
private school in New York City which three of my granddaughters
attend. I remember, too, that on the stormiest day of our passage, I was
proud of being the only child well enough to eat his meals, and that the
Captain honoured me with a seat beside him at his table.
Now, the newcomer to America, arriving at New York, stands on the deck
of a swift liner and is welcomed by the Statue of Liberty and
overwhelmed by the vaulting office-buildings springing high into the
blue. I shall tell later how I have contributed to the creation of some
of them. But on that June day of my arrival, in 1866, I simply felt that
one of the momentous hours in my life had come, when I found myself
stepping ashore into a vast garden of unlimited opportunities.