A Bridge Across the Ocean: The United States and the Holy See between the Two World Wars

Chapter 3. Troubled Times

3 TROUBLED TIMES aFter the great war: raging ameriCan nationalism Contrary to Wilson’s hope, World War I was not the war to end all wars. At Versailles, his attempts to arrive at a compromise enabling the construction of a stable international system regulated by the democratic principles contained in his Fourteen Points of January 1918 were frustrated by the European allies, especially the French, who worked for their respective national interests. The stubborn, short-sighted attitude of European statesmen made them “continue to believe they ruled the world, but in fact they laboriously plodded along in an attempt to solve the international problems of their continent.”1 Incapable of adapting to the transformations brought about by the Great War, they allowed old antagonisms to cause new rancor, which was to spark off a new catastrophe in the space of a few years.2 The combination of international stability, American supremacy, and recovery of credits created close interconnections. Hence Washington ’s attempts to stimulate European economic recovery on which depended not only the repayment of debts incurred during the war, but also European political stability and the retrenchment of revo59 1. Ennio Di Nolfo, Dagli imperi miliari agli imperi tecnologici. La politica internazionale dal XX secolo a oggi, 3rd ed. (Rome: Laterza, 2008), 57. 2. On these points, see Anthony P. Adamthwaite, The Making of the Second World War (New York: Routledge, 1989), 27–33. 60 TROUBLED TIMES lutionary movements, above all communism. Added to this was the need to avoid any continuation of the excessive loss of balance that came about at Versailles and which, apart from anything else, would have penalized American exports.3 Together with the equally complicated issues of disarmament and war reparations, these were the main issues of postwar American foreign policy: an internationalism variously described by historians as independent, conservative, even normal.4 In other words, the U.S. approach was cautious, strictly in harmony with the delicate scenario of the early 1920s, which did not call for any rebuilding of the international system, but for attempts to solve specific problems. This, then, was neither disinterest nor selfish isolationism, but a decision to cooperate based on the conviction that the primacy earned during the war would guarantee the ability to influence the decisions made by other powers.5 The protagonists of this policy were the three Republican administrations of 1921–1933, for the Republicans had gained control of the executive branch after eight years of Democratic government. In all probability, any Republican could have won in 1920, but Warren Harding was a particularly strong candidate because he could in no way be identified with any of the large-scale plans to remake America or the world. Unlike the other potential candidates of the Grand Old Party, he had never attempted to revive the Treaty of Versailles or to join the League of Nations. His ideas on many of the controversial issues of the time, usually expressed in speeches overloaded with commonplaces, were vague, so that during the electoral cam3 . See Frank Costigliola, Awkward Dominion: American Political, Economic and Cultural Relations with Europe, 1919–1933 (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1984); and Melvin P. Leffler, The Elusive Quest: America’s Pursuit of European Stability and French Security, 1919–1933 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1977). 4. These three descriptions are found respectively in Guinsburg, “The Triumph of Isolationism,” 90–105; Robert D. Schulzinger, U.S. Diplomacy since 1900, 6th ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007); and Ninkowich, The Wilsonian Century, 78–105. 5. See Selig Alder, The Uncertain Giant, 1921–1941: American Foreign Policy between the Wars (New York: Collier Books, 1965). TROUBLED TIMES 61 paign he did no more than utter a dozen or so statements without ever making his views clear. And yet this was enough to bring him victory in the 1920 presidential elections.6 Harding gave the impression of being able to satisfy the needs of American society when, at Boston in May 1920, in a speech before his nomination as a candidate for the presidency, he promised the country a return to “normalcy.” By this term, destined to enter American political folklore, he meant the wish to return to an even and peaceful way of living after the fretful parenthesis of the war that had clearly influenced every single aspect of American life and accelerated the profound processes of change which, in large measure...