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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 February 2016
Lewis Einstein (1877–1967) was a little-known diplomat who became one of Theodore Roosevelt's closest advisers on European affairs. Roosevelt's attraction to Einstein derived not only from a keen writing style and considerable fluency in European history, literature and politics, but also from his instinct for anticipating the future of European rivalries and for the important role the United States could play there in preserving peace. The two men shared a perspective on the twentieth century that saw the United States as a central arbiter and enforcer of international order—a position the majority of Americans would accept and promote only after the Second World War. The relationship between Roosevelt and Einstein sheds light on the rising status of American diplomacy and diplomats and their self-image vis-à-vis Europe at the turn of the twentieth century.
1 Standard texts on Roosevelt's foreign policy include Howard K. Beale, Theodore Roosevelt and the Rise of America to World Power (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1956); and Frederick W. Marks III, Velvet on Iron: The Diplomacy of Theodore Roosevelt (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1979). For more recent scholarship that integrates cultural history with diplomatic history and reveals the significance of Roosevelt's understanding of a global balance of power that included the United States, see Henry J. Hendrix, Theodore Roosevelt's Naval Diplomacy: The U.S. Navy and the Birth of the American Century. (Annapolis, MD: U.S. Naval Institute Press, 2009); Gregory Russell, The Statecraft of Theodore Roosevelt: The Duties of Nations and World Order (Leiden: Republic of Letters, 2009); and chapters by Lloyd Ambrosius, Carl Cavanaugh Hodge, J. Simon Rofe, and William Tilchin in Serge Ricard, ed., A Companion to Theodore Roosevelt (Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011).
2 See Hans Krabbendam and John M. Thompson, eds., America's Transatlantic Turn: Theodore Roosevelt and the “Discovery” of Europe (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012).
3 Huntington Wilson to Root, Dec. 10, 1909, f.10, box 58, Elihu Root Papers, Library of Congress.
4 George W. Liebmann, Diplomacy between the Wars: Five Diplomats and the Shaping of the Modern World (London: I. B. Tauris, 2008), 4.
5 Roosevelt quoted by George Kennan, foreword to Lewis Einstein, A Diplomat Looks Back, ed. Lawrence E. Gelfand (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1968), vii.
6 A full list of his writings is found in Einstein, A Diplomat Looks Back, 251–56.
7 Liebmann, Diplomacy between the Wars, 1.
8 A typical denunciation is found in George Young, Diplomacy Old and New (London: Swarthmore Press, 1921).
9 Einstein, A Diplomat Looks Back, 13.
10 Einstein, A Diplomat Looks Back, 3–7, 23.
11 Einstein, A Diplomat Looks Back, 24.
12 Einstein, Roosevelt: His Mind in Action (Boston, 1930), 146.
13 Einstein, A Diplomat Looks Back, 9.
14 Gelfand, introduction to ibid., xviii.
15 A.J.P. Taylor, From Napoleon to Lenin: Historical Essays (New York, Harper and Row, 1966), 135.
16 Einstein, A Diplomat Looks Back, 3.
17 Quoted in Hall, Luella J., “A Partnership in Peacemaking: Theodore Roosevelt and Wilhelm II,” Pacific Historical Review 13 (Dec. 1944): 395nCrossRefGoogle Scholar.
18 Quoted in Hall, “A Partnership in Peacemaking,” 391. Cf. Douglas Eden, “America's First Intervention in European Politics: Theodore Roosevelt and the European Crisis of 1905–1906” in A Companion to Theodore Roosevelt, ed. Ricard, esp. 358, 361.
19 Einstein, A Diplomat Looks Back, 7, 15–17, 22.
20 Taylor, From Napoleon to Lenin, 135. For Taylor's assessment of Einstein, “Watching the World Go By,” New York Review of Books, Oct. 10, 1968, 18.
21 Hall, “A Partner in Peacemaking,” 392.
22 Einstein, Roosevelt, His Mind in Action, 92. Cf. 129–30 for Roosevelt's own, more successful, reading of the kaiser during the Venezuelan crisis of 1902.
23 The classic account of this logic is William Langer, The Diplomacy of Imperialism, 1890–1902, 2 vols. (New York: Alfred Knopf, 1935).
24 Quoted in Hall, “A Partner in Peacemaking,” 410.
25 See Ernest R. May, “King Ted, the Human Dynamo,” Times Literary Supplement, Feb. 1, 2002, 9.
26 Einstein, Roosevelt, 97.
27 This case is commonly made for Woodrow Wilson but also may apply to Roosevelt. Cf. John Milton Cooper Jr. ed., Reconsidering Woodrow Wilson: Progressivism, Internationalism, War and Peace (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008); Frank Ninkovich, Modernity and Power: A History of the Domino Theory in the Twentieth Century (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994), chs. 1–2; Trygve Throntveit, “Related States: Pragmatism, Progressivism, and Internationalism in American Thought and Politics, 1880–1920” (PhD diss., Harvard University, 2008); and William Tilchin and Charles Neu, eds., Artists of Power: Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, and Their Enduring Impact on U.S. Foreign Policy (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2006).
28 Einstein, Roosevelt, 127.
29 J. Simon Rofe, “Preparedness and Defense: The Origins of Theodore Roosevelt's Strategy for the United States on the International Stage” in A Companion to Theodore Roosevelt, ed. Ricard, 78–93.
30 See, for example, Lewis Einstein, American Foreign Policy, by a Diplomatist (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1909).
31 Weigley, Russell F., review of Brune, Lester H., The Origins of American National Security Policy: Sea Power, Air Power, and Foreign Policy, 1900–1941 in American Historical Review 88 (Oct. 1983): 1093CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
32 Liebmann, Diplomacy between the Wars, 8, 13; Lewis Einstein, A Prophecy of the War (1913–1914) (New York: Columbia University Press, 1918), 87.
33 Einstein, A Prophecy of the War, 16–17.
34 Einstein, A Prophecy of the War, 17.
35 Einstein, Roosevelt, 135, 144 (regarding Roosevelt's equation of non-entanglement with ostensible neutrality in the Moroccan case).
36 Quoted in Hall, “A Partner in Peacemaking,” 392. See also Einstein, American Foreign Policy, 16–17.
37 Taylor, From Napoleon to Lenin, 153.
38 Askew, William C. and Rippy, J. Fred, “The United States and Europe's Strife, 1908–1913,” Journal of Politics 4 (Feb. 1942): 68–69CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
39 Edling, Max, review of Sexton, Jay, The Monroe Doctrine: Empire and Nation in Nineteenth-Century America, H-Diplo Roundtable Reviews 14:10 (Dec. 3, 2012): 11Google Scholar, http://h-diplo.org/roundtables/PDF/Roundtable-XIV-10.pdf (accessed Aug. 5, 2014).
40 Ronald Steel, “Walter Lippmann and the Invention of the Atlantic Community” in European Community, Atlantic Community?, eds. Valérie Aubourg, Gérard Bossuat, and Giles Scott-Smith (Paris: Soleb, 2008), 28–35.
41 Taylor, From Napoleon to Lenin, 18.
42 Askew and Rippy, “The United States and Europe's Strife,” 77. For precedents in late nineteenth-century internationalism, see Frank Ninkovich, Global Dawn: The Cultural Foundation of American Internationalism, 1865–1890 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009).
43 Einstein, Lewis, “The United States and Anglo-German Rivalry,” National Review (Jan. 1913): 736–50Google Scholar. This article appeared under the pseudonym “Washington” in the American magazine, Living Age (Feb. 8, 1913): 323–32. Two more articles in the National Review followed in November 1914 and January 1915. Liebmann, Diplomacy between the Wars, 8–14; Einstein, A Diplomat Looks Back, 252.
44 Askew and Rippy, “The United States and Europe's Strife,” 77.
45 Theodore Roosevelt, foreword to Einstein, A Prophecy of the War, 7.
46 Kennan in Einstein, A Diplomat Looks Back, viii.
47 Einstein, A Prophecy of the War, 25.
48 Einstein, A Prophecy of the War, 32–33.
49 Einstein, Roosevelt, 222–23.
50 Einstein, Roosevelt, 225.
51 William R. Castle Diaries, vol. 4, Nov. 7, 13, 1923, Castle Papers, Houghton Library, Harvard University.
52 Einstein, A Diplomat Looks Back, 171.
53 Einstein, A Diplomat Looks Back, 173.
54 Kennan, foreword to Einstein, A Diplomat Looks Back, xi. Einstein's own account of the episode is succinct: “Mr. Hoover liked to be known as the great Engineer, but his zeal in advocating the preservation of natural resources did not extend to the human ones that were at his disposal. The case with which he dropped many career men was not calculated to flatter their self-esteem, though doubtless it provided some lessons in humility. The presidential purpose was only one of utilising diplomatic posts as a hidden subsidy for administration politics. My successor at Prague obtained his training for world affairs by running a taxi company.” Einstein, A Diplomat Looks Back, 207.
55 Einstein, A Diplomat Looks Back, 213.
56 Liebmann, Diplomacy between the Wars, 27.
57 For his part, Holmes reminded Einstein that “you are wrong in thinking that I am even an unbelieving Rooseveltian … even presidents can do harm. And I think the most harmful thing that can be done is done by such of the Rooseveltian manifestos as I have seen.” Holmes to Einstein, Oct. 28, 1912, repr. in The Essential Holmes, ed. Richard A. Posner (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), 141. Their full correspondence appears in James Bishop Peabody, ed., The Holmes-Einstein Letters: Correspondence of Mr. Justice Holmes and Lewis Einstein, 1903–1935 (New York: Macmillan, 1964).
58 Einstein, A Diplomat Looks Back, 212–13.
59 Quoted in Liebmann, Diplomacy between the Wars, 28.
60 Cf. Stephanson, Anders's review of Sexton, Monroe Doctrine, H-Diplo Roundtable Reviews 14:10 (Dec. 3, 2012): 25Google Scholar.
61 Einstein to Lippmann, Mar. 1, 1930, f.359, box 8, MS 326, Walter Lippmann Papers, Yale University.
62 Quoted in Vagts, Alfred, “The United States and the Balance of Power,” Journal of Politics 3:4 (Nov. 1941): 426CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
63 Vagts, “The United States and the Balance of Power,” 99.
64 Vagts, “The United States and the Balance of Power,” 6.
65 Quoted in Einstein, A Diplomat Looks Back, xv.
66 Einstein, Roosevelt, vi.
67 Kennan in Einstein, A Diplomat Looks Back, x–xi.
68 Kennan in Einstein, A Diplomat Looks Back, xxxiii.