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12 An Admiral Diplomat in Command On 9 September 1927, on board Pittsburgh at Shanghai, Admiral Mark Bristol relieved Admiral Williams as Commander in Chief Asiatic Fleet. For nearly eight years, 1919–1927, Bristol had served as high commissioner in Turkey and as commander of U.S. naval forces in the eastern Mediterranean and the Middle East. With his seat at the American Embassy in Constantinople, Bristol functioned as both diplomat and naval officer as he sought to promote and protect American business and missionary interests in the territories of the former Ottoman Empire. He was especially friendly toward the Turkish nationalists led by the charismatic Kemal Ataturk, whom he conceived to be threatened by the predatory imperialisms of Britain, France, and Greece. And he was well known for his efforts first to find a sanctuary for thousands of White Russians fleeing for their lives from the Bolsheviks in southern Russia and later to evacuate perhaps 265,000 Greeks who in 1922 were driven by the Turks from what was then Smyrna and western Anatolia. The ships of his command, most of them destroyers, were kept in constant motion between the ports of the Black Sea and the eastern Mediterranean affording protection, very much as the ships of the Asiatic Fleet were constantly on call to protect Americans in China. In Turkey, as in China, the United States supported the Open Door principles and territorial integrity . There were thus obviously many at least superficial parallels between conditions in Turkey and those in China. When Bristol’s position as high commissioner folded with the restoration of regular diplomatic relations , the admiral was the obvious relief for Admiral Williams, whose two-year term as Commander in Chief Asiatic Fleet would expire in September 1927.1 Before raising his flag in command of the Asiatic Fleet, Bristol returned to Washington for briefing. His orders, as he related, embraced five directives: To protect American nationals; To protect American property as a secondary consideration but not to the extent of risking life; To avoid provoking another Boxer outbreak; To hold no concession in China other than the International Settlement at Shanghai; and To avoid conflict with organized Chinese armed forces. The last two points, he recognized, were contradictory, as the American and Chinese armed forces would inevitably clash if the Americans tried to defend the International Settlement against a Chinese attack. These instructions, in Bristol’s view, embraced a general, though perhaps unspecified, order to maintain friendly relations with all Chinese and to preserve strict neutrality toward Chinese internal conflicts.2 Unlike his job at Constantinople, his Asiatic Fleet command was officially a strictly naval appointment. The admiral himself insisted that he would keep out of State Department business. But since Minister John MacMurray had been summoned to Washington only a month before Bristol’s arrival at Shanghai, it was natural to suspect that Bristol was destined for MacMurray’s post or for a role as high commissioner in China. In- An Admiral Diplomat in Command / 167 deed, to the embarrassment of the legation in Peking, the China Weekly Review published a report from the New Orleans Times-Picayune which said that Minister MacMurray being out of harmony with the administration in Washington, Admiral Bristol would probably serve as President Coolidge’s principal adviser on the Far East.3 The Review also devoted an unprecedented two-page spread to Bristol’s accession to the Asiatic Fleet command in which it extolled his service as high commissioner in Turkey, an obvious statement in support of the view that MacMurray’s hardline approach would be replaced by American policies more friendly to the aspirations of Nationalist Chinese.4 MacMurray left the legation in the charge of Ferdinand Mayer, every bit a supporter of a strong line in defense of foreign rights and interests as was MacMurray. He was also a defender of the State Department’s prerogatives against intrusion by naval officers. It will be recalled that two years earlier, Mayer had pressed for the recall of Captain Constein when Mayer discovered that the South China Patrol commander, in the absence of the consul general at Canton, had deliberately befriended the Nationalist Chinese. Mayer had been alerted to the alleged formation of a New York cabal, possibly with the connivance of Alfred Sze, the Chinese minister in Washington, aimed at MacMurray’s dismissal . And the chargé was not pleased when, notwithstanding a hint from MacMurray that Bristol need not visit Peking during the minister’s absence, Bristol...

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