Hugh Gibson

Hugh Gibson

Hugh S. Gibson (August 16, 1883December 12, 1954), Career diplomat and “career humanitarian” ("New York Times", December 13, 1954), was actively involved in disarmament talks from 1925 to 1932, and (together with such colleagues as ambassadors Joseph C. Grew, William R. Castle and Hugh R. Wilson), remained throughout his career a leading proponent in the drive to establish a professional Foreign Service based on merit – as against personal wealth and/or political influence. He was active in famine relief work in Europe during and after World War I and also pursued these efforts during and after World War II. His close friendship with Herbert Hoover began in this context.

As first American minister plenipotentiary to Poland in 1919, he was called upon to respond to the acute problems of a renascent state while investigating reports of pogroms and mistreatment of Polish Jews in the chaotic postwar years (1919 to 1924). His reporting on this highly sensitive matter was surrounded by controversy, but ultimately won the approval of significant figures of the American Jewish community.

Gibson retired from the Foreign Service in 1938, worked in London for the Commission for Relief in Belgium (C.R.B.) during the first two years of the war after which, having returned to the United States, he went into publishing (Doubleday, Doran and Co. Inc.) and, after World War II, published, among other things, the journals of Joseph Goebbels, Galeazzo Ciano and Ulrich von Hassell.

The last years of his life were spent running the Intergovernmental Committee for European Migration in Geneva.

CHRONOLOGY

Hugh Simons Gibson (born Los Angeles, California, August 16, 1883, the son of Francis (Frank) Asbury Gibson and Mary Kellogg Simons – died Genthod, Geneva, Switzerland, December 12, 1954) Secretary of Legation, Tegucigalpa, Honduras, July 31, 1908; second secretary, American Embassy, London, 1909 – 1910; private secretary to Assistant Secretary of State, Washington D.C. 1910-1911; secretary of Legation, Havana, Cuba 1911 – 1913; secretary of Legation, Brussels, Belgium 1914 – 1916; assigned to embassy, London, May 16, 1916, to Department of State, February 28, 1917; attached to British secretary of state for foreign affairs during visit to U.S., April-June, 1917; attached to Belgian war mission during the visit of the mission to the U.S., June-August, 1917; appointed first secretary to embassy, Paris, March, 1918; duty with Mr. Hoover, director general of relief, November 1918 – April 1919; member of inter-allied mission to countries of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, December 1919 – January 1919; U.S. Minister Plenipotentiary to Poland April 16, 1919 – 1924. Appointed Minister to Switzerland in 1924; ambassador to Belgium and minister to Luxemburg 1927 – 1933 (also 1937 – 1938). Vice-chairman of the American Delegation to the International Conference for control of the traffic of arms, Geneva, 1925; Chairman of the U.S. delegation to the Preparatory Commission for the General Disarmament Conference, 1926 – 1932, chair of the U.S. delegation and chair of the Tripartite Naval Conference, 1927; delegate to conference on private manufacture of arms, 1927; American delegation to Conference for limitation of Naval Armament and chairman of conference, 1927; delegate to the London Naval Conference, 1930, acting chairman, U.S. delegation at the General Disarmament Conference, Geneva, 1932 – 1933; ambassador to Brazil, 1933 – 1937; U.S. representative on mediatory group to end Chaco war, Buenos Aires, 1935; delegate to the Chaco Peace Conference, 1935; Director General for Europe of Commission for Polish Relief and Commission for Relief in Belgium, 1940 – 1941; Director Commission for Relief in Belgium and Belgian-American Educational Foundation. Chairman National Committee on Food for the Small Democracies. Assistant to the Honorary Chairman of the President’s emergency famine committee, accompanies former President Herbert Hoover on his worldwide travels to take stock of the food situation in Europe, Asia and South America, March – June, 1946; President’s Economic Mission to Germany and Austria, February, 1947; Director, Provisional Intergovernmental Committee for the Movement of Migrants from Europe, 1951 – 1952; member of the Hoover Commission appointed by President Dwight D. Eisenhower to reorganize the executive departments, 1953; director Intergovernmental Committee for European Migration, 1952 – 1954

Family background and education

Hugh S. Gibson’s grandfather (also Hugh Gibson), a Methodist minister of Scottish descent, had been sent to California as an Indian Agent. Assigned to the Round Valley Reservation (on what had formerly been Yuki Indian territory), he was horrified by the condition in which he found the population and, according to a family tradition, went beyond his administrative duties by setting up a school to teach them to read and write and to give them some idea of the outside world.

Hugh S. Gibson’s father, Francis A. Gibson, a banker, took the position of cashier of the First National Bank in Los Angeles after a “panic” hit financial circles in 1894. Frank’s wife, Mary Simons, trained as a schoolteacher. She was also “a woman ahead of her time”, says Diane C. Wood (p. 36-37), a political and educational activist, who “believed in birth control, a measure of sexual equality, Indian policy reform and world peace.” She militated in favor of voting rights for women (as did her son), campaigned for Theodore Roosevelt and, as a member of the California Commission of Immigration and Housing, she was the leader of a group of women who initiated, lobbied for, and administered a new program, set up by the California Home Teacher Act of 1915 to provide schooling to immigrant women in California, teaching them English and “the American way of life.” [ See Diane C. Woods’s PhD dissertation at Stanford University (June 1996), Immigrant mothers, female reformers, and women teachers: the California Home Teachers Act of 1915 devoted to this initiative. ]

Gibson was a delicate child. He caught polio at the age of four but suffered no lasting aftereffects. As a result of his childhood health problems, however, he was largely educated by his mother and by private tutors until he went to Pomona College for two years in 1900.

The Gibson family was not wealthy, but Frank Gibson, upon his death in 1901, left his wife and son with sufficient means to tour Europe for a year and then put Hugh through four years at the École Libre des Sciences Politiques in Paris, from which he graduated with high honors in 1907. He thereupon returned to the United States and sought admission to the Foreign Service. He was received with the highest grades and appointed secretary of legation in Tegucigalpa, Honduras.

Early career

Gibson would thereafter be posted in London, Washington D.C. and Cuba successively, before being appointed secretary to the American Legation in Belgium – a “quiet post”, he was assured – which he reached in April 1914. Four months later, in August 1914, World War I began, two million German soldiers marched into the country and the staff of the American Legation, as representatives of a neutral power, found themselves involved in the task of evacuating German nationals along with tourists and travelers from other countries. The head of mission in Belgium was Brand Whitlock, the former mayor of Toledo, Ohio. [Gibson’s career is examined in detail in Ronald R. Swerczek’s Ph. D. dissertation, “The Diplomatic Career of Hugh Gibson 1908-1938”, University of Iowa, 1972]

Gibson, as a neutral observer, traveled around Belgium (he witnessed and took photos of the sack of Louvain) and, making his way through battle lines, he was also sent on missions to Great Britain. He was thus present in the London office of American Ambassador Walter Hines Page when Page and representatives of Belgium persuaded Herbert Hoover to set aside his engineering activities in order to organize food relief for occupied Belgium. This led to the creation of the Commission for Relief in Belgium (C.R.B.), which would in time send food not only to Belgium but also to the occupied parts of northern France, where it fed 9.5 million people.

As secretary to the Legation, Gibson worked closely with Hoover and the Commission for Relief in Belgium in Belgium and developed a great admiration for Hoover’s talents as an organizer. On June 20, 1915, Gibson and the C.R.B. staffer (later Ambassador) Gilchrist B. Stockton [ On Stockton and others, see http://net.lib.byu.edu/estu/wwi/comment/AmerVolunteers/Morse5.htm ] made the following entry in Gibson’s house book: “Gilchrist B. Stockton and Hugh Gibson hereby found the ‘Hoover for President Club’, for the purpose of sending Herbert Hoover to the White House within a maximum period of fifteen years. To this end Gilchrist Stockton undertakes to vote Republican if necessary. The Club is limited to two – count them, T-W-O – members, any others claiming to be original Hoover men are impostors and probably dangerous ones.” [ All of Hugh Gibson’s papers can be consulted in the Hoover Institute (C.R.B.)on War, Revolution and Peace at Stanford University, Stanford, California] .

Gibson acquired considerable notoriety in August 1915 as a result of his efforts to save the British nurse Edith Cavell, who was sentenced to death for having, by her own admission, helped some 200 British soldiers to escape from Belgium and return to their regiments in England. Gibson and the Spanish Ambassador, Rodrigo de Saavedra y Vinent, Marques de Villalobar, [ See http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Villalobar_(Rodrigo_Saavedra_y_Vinent,_marqu%C3%A9s_de)] sought in vain to convince the German High Command that “this murder would stir all civilized countries with horror and disgust.”

Gibson was assigned to the American Embassy in London in May, 1916. He subsequently served in various positions both in Washington and in Paris, notably, in 1918, with Hoover’s organization for the relief and reconstruction of Europe after the Armistice. He was an American member of the first Interallied Mission to visit the countries of the old Austro-Hungarian Empire after the signature of the Austrian armistice. In 1919, Woodrow Wilson appointed him minister plenipotentiary in newly restored Poland and he served there during the first five years of Polish independence.

"A blithe spirit”

One of Gibson’s most distinctive character traits should surely be recorded here because it always struck and ingratiated those who worked with him and often showed up in his correspondence and even in his official reports. In the words of Huntington Wilson, Assistant Secretary of State, for whom Gibson worked in 1911, Gibson was “a blithe spirit (who) radiated a whimsical humor that was just what the department, too dour in its application of business, needed.” [ Huntington Wilson, “Memoirs of an Ex-Diplomat”, Boston, Bruce Humphries, Inc, 1945, p. 235.] This humor never seemed to compromise his professionalism or his effectiveness but served rather to make things easier in tense situations.

It showed up, for instance, on June 28, 1927, at a tense moment of the Naval Disarmament Conference when there was some anxiety about the Japanese delegation’s response to British demands and Gibson found it desirable to break up the meeting in order to avoid further tension.

As reported by Hugh Wilson (who was in on the plot) Gibson, together with the members of his delegation strode into the room with solemn faces and addressed the press “somewhat as follows”: “I have a very serious communication to make to you today” (all the journalists begin taking notes). The American delegation finds itself in a critical situation and I want to appeal to the American correspondents for that same backing and sympathy which they have heretofore shown us so abundantly. I want to appeal to the sense of fair play and justice of the correspondents of other nations who are here present. (You could have heard a pin drop). I have just received from the Japanese Delegation a proposal. It is perhaps somewhat difficult to explain so I think that the best course for me to pursue is to treat you with the utmost frankness and to read the proposal to you.”

Gibson thereupon pulled a letter out of his pocket which read as follows:

“In the interest of that moral harmony which should precede physical disarmament and in order to promote better understanding among our two nations, the Japanese press and delegation here in Geneva have organized a baseball team and submit to your Excellency a challenge for a game to be played between this team and any team which your Excellency may be able to organize among the Americans present. The size of ball, length of bat, time and place of game to be subject to technical negotiations. Respectfully, Hanishida Ito.”

"There was a gasp of amazement", Hugh Wilson recalls, "followed by a roar which rocked the building. The meeting turned into a farce". As a British delegate subsequently declared “never in any conference, had he seen the correspondents so properly had.” The game was played on July 27. The Japanese won, 28 to 8. [“Hugh Gibson, 1883-1954, Extracts from his Letters and Anecdotes from his Friends”, edited by Perrin C. Galpin, New York, 1956, the matter is recorded in Hugh Wilson’s words, pp. 62-63.]

Joseph C. Grew remembered 28 year-old Gibson at the State Department in 1911 as a “crackerjack” and a “wild Indian” and reminisced in his memoirs about the “Saturday afternoon after Wilson had left, (when he saw Gibson) playing chimes on all the bell buttons which called all of the chiefs of bureaus to the Secretary of State’s room, and then fleeing down the corridor of that sedate old Department like an Apache on the war trail.” [ Grew to John MacMurray in Joseph C. Grew, "Turbulent Era: a Diplomatic Record of Forty Years 1904-1945", Boston, Houghton Mifflin Co., 1952, I, 76-77.]

Confirming this reputation, Gibson’s colleagues at the Commission for Relief in Belgium published a 163-page volume shortly after he died. It briefly summed up his life work and gathered together quotes gleaned from his correspondence and reminiscences sent in by friends and colleagues illustrating this aspect of his personality. (see note 8).

Poland and the Jewish Question

When Gibson reached Warsaw in the spring of 1919, he did not find a country in full control of its territory. Poland, freed from the domination of the three partitioning powers only some months earlier, still had no definite borders (they would only be defined in 1923); its economy was in a shambles; its administration, often oppressively run by these former powers (Prussia, Russia and Austria) over the past 123 years, had fallen apart; national policy, torn between conflicting political parties, remained unsettled and a new and still fragile government was barely finding its bearings when the Polish-Soviet war broke out in February that year.

Yet despite all these handicaps, under the guidance of Józef Piłsudski, their chief of state, and their first Prime Minister Ignacy Jan Paderewski (who represented Poland at the Versailles Peace Conference), the Poles quickly organized an army that defeated the Bolsheviks, established a government of national unity and, in spite of all the domestic strife, did not fall prey to a revolution as Hungary did. Still, as Gibson wrote with dour humor nine months later, “The Poles, are rent with internecine quarrels and all their old imperialisms have revived. And instead of taking to themselves trowels and mortar and with prayer and fasting laboring at the foundations, the sit squabbling amid the ruins debating whether they shall ally themselves to the Persians or the Medes; whilst their trumpeters march in procession to all the seven cities of Philistia proclaiming loudly, ‘When our greatness is re-established how great that greatness will be’.” [ Letter to Frederick R. Dolbeare, January 29, 1920, quoted in "Hugh Gibson, 1883-1954, Extracts from his Letters and Anecdotes from his Friends", edited by Perrin C. Galpin, New York, 1956 ]

The Legation, too, was in turmoil. With thousands of Polish Jews applying for visas to emigrate to the United States the staff of three clerks (one of whom was a young lady with a “very slight idea of the English language gained in Russia,”) was soon overwhelmed. Meanwhile, the State Department was expecting Gibson to send in perceptive reports on conditions in neighboring Russia. By July, he was complaining that “we are all about to break down” and if appropriations for more clerical staff were not quickly made, he would have to close the Chancery or send all his staff to the hospital to recover from overwork. [ Letter to Arthur Bliss Lane, July 26, 1919. Lane Papers.]

Gibson’s actions in Poland were guided by the assumption that a strong Poland was needed to ensure the stability of Europe by serving as “a bulwark against Bolshevism”. There can be no question of dealing comprehensively with his active involvement in the construction of the Polish state. One issue, however, because it became particularly controversial, should be dealt with here: the Jewish Question.

The country was populated by six different minorities, including 14% of Jews, and reports of pogroms, mostly in former Imperial Russian territory, were beginning to hit the front pages of American papers. Shortly after his arrival, Gibson was instructed to investigate and, in June 1919, he and Dr. Boris Bogen, general director of European relief operations of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (J.D.C.), and/or members of the Legation staff, traveled to several Polish cities (including Wilno, Lwow/Lviv and Pinsk) where such events had reportedly occurred.

As Gibson’s correspondence and his reports reveal, he was concerned from the outset with a) separating fact from rumor and from willful disinformation emanating from Russian or German sources, b) determining whether the Polish government could be held responsible for any of theses excesses (since this would have justified action by the American government) and c) evaluating the risks of their recurrence.

In due course, Gibson and his team concluded that many of the newspaper reports had been inflated or even based on hearsay and confabulation. As it turned out, certain stories reported in the American press appeared to have been planted by a soviet agency working out of Sweden, while others had been picked up from German newspapers. This was entirely plausible, since both Russians and Germans feared the rise of a new and potentially powerful state on their border and were eager to discredit it.

Still, as it would appear, a significant number of acts of violence against Jews had indeed occurred (280 confirmed cases, according to Henry Morgenthau’s subsequent report) [ “According to the Jadwin and Johnson Report: “Within the boundaries of Congress Poland only 18 Jews lost their lives, while in the whole territory now controlled or occupied by the Polish Republic the grand total of deaths from excesses in which antisemitism was a factor has not exceeded 300.” ] . In Gibson’s view, however not all of these could be construed as anti-Semitic in intent, since some had occurred on the volatile front line of the Soviet-Polish war where a number of Jews were (rightly or wrongly) perceived as snipers or sympathizers of the Bolsheviks [ As Gibson noted, speaking of the state of mind in Poland at that time, “One of the more popular theories about Bolshevism is that it is an almost exclusively Jewish movement and one of the steps in the “Great Jewish World Conspiracy.” There is no doubt that the individuals in control of the Soviet machinery are Jews in an overwhelming proportion but I have never seen anything to prove the existence of a Jewish world conspiracy, or to show that Bolshevism is a Jewish movement. However, it does seem clear the reasons for Jewish predominance among the leaders of Bolshevism are perfectly natural. It must be remembered that during many generations the Jews in the old Russian empire were subjected to frightful persecution and oppression of a sort calculated to turn their active minds towards subversive doctrines. Despite all the oppression they clung tenaciously to education and amid the great mass of ignorant Russians they alone were able to read and to discuss with intelligence the revolutionary literature so widely disseminated in tracts and pamphlets. (…) As a result, when this Bolshevist movement broke out and an opportunity was offered for putting these doctrines into practice, the people equipped for the work were largely Jews. (…) It has been inevitable that individual Jews have grown steadily in power under the Soviet system, and that the superficial impression should have been generally thought that Bolshevism was a Jewish movement.” (Report to the Secretary of State, February, 1922, Gibson Papers, box 101).] while other incidents occurred in the course of food riots (as in Częstochowa) during which, he found, an even larger number of Christian shops had also been ransacked. Finally, a number of the more blatantly anti-Semitic acts were imputable to soldiers of the Haller Army, over which the government had no direct control though the military authorities in due course meted out punishment on the soldiers concerned.

Later, in a letter to Assistant Secretary of State, William Phillips, (July 6, 1919) he took the view that Polish anti-Semitism had largely been a product of the Imperial régimes that “aroused and maintained public feeling against the Jews as part of the system of dominating through internal dissension”. [ Andrzej Kapiszewski, "Hugh Gibson and a Controversy over Polish-Jewish Relations after World War I" Jagellonian University, Wydawnictwo i Drukarnia “Secesja”, 1991 (ISBN: 83-233-0505-6), pp. 67 ff. ] The recent collapse of these régimes, he concluded, had left a power vacuum, which gave free rein to the accumulated hatreds of the past. He nonetheless believed that once the situation returned to normal, the Jews of Poland could be protected by their government just like all other citizens.

Several prominent American Zionists, however, familiar with the 19th-century history of pogroms in Russia and assuming that these recent incidents represented a deliberate attempt to thin out the Jewish population of Poland through massacre, were determined to hold the fledgling Polish state responsible. Thus Felix Frankfurter (later Associate Justice at the Supreme Court) wrote to Woodrow Wilson (May 22, 1919) ‘the Polish Government must be bullied and browbeaten into quitting its policy of extermination and persecution.” [ Wilson Papers, vol. 55, pp.369 ff. ]

"Gibson's skeptical reports to the State Department about the troubles of Polish Jews came to the attention of [Supreme Court Justice Louis] Brandeis. On 14 June 1919, Gibson was called by Colonel House to a meeting with the fabled justice and his protégé, Felix Frankfurter. Gibson not only was at a disadvantage because of Brandeis' exalted status but also because his appointment as ambassador to Poland had yet to be confirmed by the Senate. In Gibson's words, the two Zionists opened what the young diplomat later called the 'prosecution' by saying that 'I had done more mischief to the Jewish race than anyone who had lived in the last century. They said...that my reports on the Jewish question had gone around the world and had undone their work...They finally said that I had stated that the stories of excesses against the Jews were exaggerated, to which I replied that they certainly were and I should think any Jew would be glad to know it.” [ Donald Neff, "Fallen Pillars: U.S. Policy Towards Palestine and Israel since 1945". ]

Neff adds that "Frankfurter claimed that Gibson 'had no right to make reports to the department in regard to Jewish matters and should have 'refused' on the ground that I could not possibly learn enough about them to make even general observations.' Frankfurter then hinted that if Gibson continued his reports the Zionists would block his confirmation as ambassador to Poland by the Senate." (Neff, p. 20)

Louis Marshall, President of the American Jewish Committee, who also favored dealing sternly with the Polish government, took the view that Gibson was willfully minimizing the whole matter, and he and others launched a vituperative campaign against him in the American press.

In Gibson’s view, however, the approach they favored could only be counterproductive. He held that, in the absence of any evidence that such acts were officially encouraged, there was no point in “bullying” a government which still had a shaky hold on the land. Indeed, it would be in the best interest of the Jews (and of all concerned) to strengthen the new and still fragile government (rather than “bullying and browbeating it”), since this would ultimately allow it to assume its responsibilities and ensure the security of all its citizens.

Gibson was surprised by the policy of the Zionists and expressed perplexity at the goals they were pursuing, since he assumed that their prime interest should be the security of Polish Jews. He was convinced that the anti-Polish campaign in the American press was actually putting Polish Jews in danger and, since they were inevitably reported in the Polish press, they could only add fuel an already volatile situation and foster further disorder. [ The Wilno incident affected 2000 people who were robbed and/or beaten and displaced and 65 killed (Morgenthau) yet, Kapiszewski notes, with interest that “the (June 10, 1919) "New York Times" report about outbreaks in Wilno was presented at length in two columns as a main story while information about four pogroms in Russia at the same time in which 29,350 Jews were killed was presented in only a few lines at the bottom of a page.” (Note 40, p. 109). The Zionists’ strategy and history is gone into by Donald Neff in "Fallen Pillars – U.S. Policy towards Palestine and Israel since 1945", Institute for Palestine Studies, Washington D.C. ]

The Morgenthau Mission

While the Zionists had their agenda and continued to challenge Gibson’s conclusions, a number of equally prominent American Jews, disagreed with them. These included Ambassador Abram I. Elkus, [ On June 23, 1919, acting Secretary Frank Polk wrote to his chief, Robert Lansing: “Department has shown Mr. Elkus all of Gibson’s reports. Elkus in turn has shown these reports to Messrs. Schiff, Judge Magrader, Rosen, Walcott, Mossburg, Strauss and Stephenwise. Elkus advises that all these persons are entirely satisfied with rulings of the Department and have a feeling of the utmost confidence in Gibson himself.”(Gibson Papers, box 92).] Dr. Boris Bogen, who had already investigated the matter with Gibson, and Henry Morgenthau, Sr., former U.S. ambassador to Turkey whom President Woodrow Wilson appointed to head a commission of inquiry that went to Poland from July 13 to September 13, 1919 to investigate the allegations, and whose conclusions regarding official Polish implication differed little from Gibson’s own.

In Morgenthau’s view, in any event, anti-Semitic activities in Poland were partly a result of the unsettled condition of the country. During his two-month, 2500-mile journey through Poland, Morgenthau visited the eight cities in which the more important excesses had occurred. These were Kielce, Nov. 11, 1918, Lemberg (Lwow/Lviv), Nov. 21-23, 1918, Pinsk, April 5, 1919, Lida, April 17, 1919, Wilno (Vilnius), April 19-21, 1919, Kolbussowa, May 7, 1919, Częstochowa, May 27, 1919 and Minsk, August 8, 1919. He gathered more information than Gibson and his staff had been able to do in their brief visits, but his conclusions did not satisfy the Zionist wing, which declared the report a “whitewash” of the Polish government – and so the debate raged on. [ Oblique implications of “anti-Semitism” on Gibson’s part are to be found in certain publications that have since been devoted to the subject. This is the case in Swerczek’s Ph.D. thesis and in Kapisewski’s study referenced below which concludes that: “it is difficult, however, to fully accept the thesis of (Gibson’s) anti-Semitism” (, p.53). This may be construed, in part, as a faint afterglow of the enduring Zionist resentment, which at one time presented Gibson as an anti-Semite, but also of the fact that he himself, in his reports, occasionally voiced displeasure with the way certain (pro-Zionist?) members of the Joint Distribution Committee behaved while they were in Poland. As Minister, he viewed this behavior as disruptive not only of American policy goals, but also of the stable and peaceful relations he was attempting to foster between Jews and non-Jews in Poland. ]

Gibson’s handling of the matter is comprehensively dealt with by Professor Andrzej Kapiszewski who takes note of Gibson’s assumption that Polish Jews should “reform themselves, become “team players” and blend in with their country’s citizens, just as the assimilated Jews had done in the West.” [ Kapiszewski, "Conflicting Reports on the Situation of Jews in Poland in the Aftermath of World War I" published in the University of Krakow’s "Studia Judaica", No 7, 2004, p. 364. This essay, which can be found on the web http://www.studiajudaica.pl/sj14kapi.pdf, contains the substance of Pr. Kapiszewski’s earlier book, (see note 6 above). ]

Kapiszewski (1991) also notes that Gibson “was much involved in relief efforts for the entire population, not for the Jews in particular. He was also not fearful of the future of Polish-Jewish relations as he believed that the antagonism between the two communities was a legacy of the politics of the partitioning powers, Russia in particular, which would diminish when the country achieved a stage of normalcy.” (p. 50)

Gibson later (1954) pointed out, in a conversation with his son, how regrettable it was that Germany had not been required to subscribe to the same Minorities Treaty that had been imposed on Poland, since this might have saved many more lives.

DISARMAMENT

In February 1922 Gibson married Ynès Reyntiens, daughter of a prominent Belgian family. Her father, Major Robert Reyntiens, had been Aide-de-camp to King Leopold II, and her mother, Anita de Errazu y de Rubio de Tejada, was Spanish. Ynès had gone to boarding school in England. She spoke several languages, loved music and dancing, was an expert horsewoman and engaged in many athletic activities. In November 1922, Ynès gave birth to their first child, a little girl who died a few seconds after birth. (A second child was born in 1929).

In January 1924, Gibson was in Washington to testify on the merits of the Rogers Bill before the House Committee on Foreign Affairs. This bill proposed to fuse together the diplomatic and consular services but also to create conditions favorable to the maintenance of a competent and professional Foreign Service. Gibson was an active proponent of the establishment of such a body which, he believed, could best defend American interests. It was in these circumstances that he described the undesirable elements of the Foreign Service as “the boys with the white spats, the tea drinkers, the cookie pushers,” [ The American Dialect Society states he coined the term "Cookie Pushers" to describe some US Foreign Service officers.] suggesting that they could be replaced by better men attracted by more favorable conditions resulting from the passage of the bill. [ U.S. House of Representatives, Committee of Foreign Affairs, Hearings on H.R. 17 and H.R. 6357 (H.R. 6357 Reported Favorably) for the Reorganization and Improvement of the Foreign Service of the United States, and for Other Purposes, January 14-18, 1924, 68th Cong., Ist Sess. (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1924, p. 40.] That same year, the Rogers Bill was enacted into law.

Gibson was offered a post as Undersecretary of States in 1924 but declined it because he judged his income inadequate. He was consequently reassigned as minister to Switzerland. In 1927, he returned to Belgium as ambassador.

In the interval, starting in 1925 (and in a capacity later described as that of “Ambassador-at-Large”), he had become involved in a succession of conferences devoted alternately to general disarmament and naval disarmament. These conferences, assembling the major powers of the world, would occupy him for some ten years as he served, most of the time, as conference chairman.

Gibson would later declare himself an ardent supporter of the League of Nations and the International Court, at least as experiments in preserving the peace. Like many of his generation, he was acutely aware of the destabilizing effects of the Versailles Treaty, and deeply concerned by the conduct of French diplomacy, which, animated by an understandable fear, unrealistically sought to ruin and humiliate Germany. This sometimes led them to impose conditions that were of no clear advantage to France, but provided ammunition to extremist agitators within Germany itself. Reviewing the situation in 1942 (in "The Problems of Lasting Peace", co-authored with Herbert Hoover) Gibson pronounced the whole course of French diplomacy (in the 1920s and 1930s), “except in certain intervals of Briand’s ascendancy, incredible. We have here, (he wrote), the age-old forces of fear and hate doing their suicidal worst.” (p. 144). In Gibson’s view, the French refusal to re-examine the ruinous load of reparation imposed upon Germany by the Versailles treaty, together with the French initiative in forming an alliance of nations that totally encircled Germany, and their manifest foot-dragging in matters of disarmament set the stage for World War II, since it so weakened the democratic régime of Chancellor Heinrich Brüning, that it crumbled before the onslaught of the Nazis in 1933.

But other factors were also contributing to failure of the disarmament process.As Gibson himself would put it ten years later:

“Through all the years of discussion in Geneva it was demonstrated that the direct approach to the reduction of arms was merely an attempt to deal with the symptoms rather than with the disease…. It soon became clear that no important results were to be achieved through negotiations limited to men and ships and guns. There were various attempts to find other approaches…. these approaches had their merits, but they … ignored a fundamental problem. Over a long period a number of Great Powers had built up a whole system of national life and national economy based on huge military establishments. These had come to be a recognized way of dealing with the problem of unemployment. To begin with, there were large numbers of men absorbed into the military forces. To supplement these were government arsenals with another army of workmen, with a still larger number employed in providing supplies, food, clothing, and transportation. No government living under this system could undertake drastic reduction of armaments without disrupting the whole national economy. We may as well recognize the fact that there can be no more than fragmentary and regional reductions until the nations are prepared to grapple with this fundamental difficulty.” [ Hugh Gibson, "The Road to Foreign Policy",Doubleday, Doran and Co. Inc, 1944, p. 105]

END OF CAREER

When Franklin D. Roosevelt was elected President in 1932, Gibson, as was customary, sent in his resignation. Although Gibson’s close relationship to Herbert Hoover was something of a handicap in the new political context, he was appointed ambassador to Brazil. He was also sent as an observer to the Chaco Peace Conference which was being held in Buenos Aires. The Gran Chaco was a territory with loosely defined borders claimed in part by Bolivia, Paraguay and Argentina, and a war broke out when Bolivia sought to acquire territory that would give the country access to the Paraguay River and thus to the Atlantic Ocean. A treaty was ultimately signed in 1938.

Gibson returned as ambassador to Belgium in 1937. In 1938 he was offered the post of ambassador to Germany, but he noted, as he had in 1924, that he lacked the personal fortune that would have allowed him to maintain a post of that magnitude, and preferred to resign. In his 1924 testimony before the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, he had compared his own situation to that of an admiral, sent on a trip around the world "with instructions to call at various ports, entertain the right people and pay for all expenses, including provisions for his ship, out of his own salary". [ U.S. House of Representatives, Committee of Foreign Affairs, Hearings on H.R. 17 and H.R. 6357 (H.R. 6357 Reported Favorably) for the Reorganization and Improvement of the Foreign Service of the United States, and for Other Purposes, January 14-18, 1924, 68th Cong., Ist Sess. (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1924, pp. 18-19. ] Throughout his career, he had made every effort to modify this situation which sometimes made it necessary to appoint wealthy men with no diplomatic experience as chiefs of mission in sensitive posts.

After the outbreak of World War II, at the request of former President Hoover, Gibson remained in Great Britain to negotiate authorization for the organization of food relief for the civilian population in territories occupied by German forces. Winston Churchill, who had opposed relief in 1914, remained hostile to the idea in 1940 (“the idea does more credit to heart than to head,” he is reported to have said) [Hugh Gibson to his son Michael Francis Gibson, in 1954). ] The British feared that the Nazi authorities would take whatever food was sent in.

Gibson responded to this argument in 1944 with a counterexample: In 1941, he said the Turkish Government addressed to the British Foreign Office a request for permission to send food to the suffering Greeks. In reply it received the same objection that had been made to Gibson in 1940-1941. “But the Turkish Government, instead of washing its hands of the Greeks, set us an example of human compassion by notifying the Foreign Office that on a specified date it was sending certain ships designated by name to certain Greek ports. This amounted to forcing the blockade, but it got food to the Greeks. Other Allied Powers decided to participate in the work, and food has been sent uninterruptedly to Greece from that day to this. Our own government has gone clearly on record in writing to defend the Greek operation, maintaining that the food reaches the Greek population, that the Nazi authorities do not take it, and generally advancing in support of Greek relief the very arguments put forward in vain on behalf of the other sufferers among our Allies.” [ Hugh Gibson, “The Road to Foreign Policy,” Doubleday, Doran and Co. Inc, 1944, p. 221]

In January 1940, Gibson made several radio broadcasts to alert public opinion to the Nazi menace (Wake up America, on NBC). In 1941, he returned to the United States and went into publishing (Doubleday, Doran and Co. Inc.) and, after World War II, published, among other things, the journals of Joseph Goebbels, Galeazzo Ciano and Ulrich von Hassell.

In March 1946, President Truman [ See comments on the mission to Poland on http://www.hoover.org/hila/exhibits/3244966.html; Hoover’s December 1962 letter to Truman, which Truman had framed http://www.trumanlibrary.org/hoover/intro.htm] asked former President Herbert Hoover to make an on the spot assessment of world food resources in order to avert a possible worldwide famine. Gibson and others went with him. In the course of a three-month journey aboard the presidential plane, Air Force One, they circled the world and stopped off in 44 cities. According to Hoover’s estimate, five hundred million people were then threatened with food shortages. He and his team took stock of all food available worldwide, and coordinated its transfer to those countries where it was needed. In doing this they arguably did avert famines in many parts of the world. A second, three-week journey undertaken in 1947 took Mr. Hoover and his team back to Germany, Austria and Italy to assess economic conditions in those countries. Returning from this visit, Hoover criticized Henry Morgenthau Jr.'s plan to “pastoralize” Germany. To do this, he held, one would have to eliminate 25 million Germans or move them out of the country. The plan was ultimately abandoned.

During the last years of his life, Gibson was director of the Intergovernmental Committee for European Migration in Geneva. This organization, mandated to help European governments to identify resettlement countries for the estimated 11 million people uprooted by the war, arranged transport for nearly a million migrants during the 1950s. Following Gibson’s death, former German Chancellor Heinrich Brüning (1930-1932) declared that: “He was…one of the greatest diplomatists the USA has had in two generations, but,” he added, “he was too modest for getting publicity for his views.” [ Letter to Michael Francis Gibson, February 14, 1955, copy on file at the Hoover Institution. ]

Gibson died in Geneva on December 12, 1954 and is buried in the cemetery of Genthod, outside Geneva. [cite news | url = http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=FB0815FB3959177B93C1A81789D95F408585F9 | title = Hugh S. Gibson Dies at Geneva; Long a Diplomat and Relief Aide; Foreign Service Officer 30 Years, Head of Committee for Migration, Was 71 | format = fee | date = 1954-12-12 | accessdate = 2007-08-27 | work = The New York Times | page = 1 | author = Associated Press ] A tree was planted and a bronze memorial plaque installed on the lawn outside the United Nations building in Geneva on the centennial of his birth, August 16, 1983.

----

Gibson was on the front cover of "Time" for the November 26, 1923, July 18, 1927 and the February 8, 1932 issues.

References

Books by Hugh Gibson

* "A Journal from Our Legation in Belgium", Doubleday Page, New York, 1917.
* "Rio", Doubleday Doran, New York, 1937.
* "Belgium", Doubleday Doran, New York, 1938.
* "The Problems of Lasting Peace", with Herbert Hoover, Doubleday Doran, New York, 1942.
* "The Road to Foreign Policy", Doubleday Doran, New York, 1944.
* "The Basis of Lasting Peace",with Herbert Hoover, D. van Norstrand Company, Inc., New York, 1945
* "Hugh Gibson, 1883-1954, Extracts from his Letters and Anecdotes from his Friends", edited by Perrin C. Galpin, New York, 1956.

Books and essays about Hugh Gibson or mentioning him

* Donald Neff, "Fallen Pillars – U.S. Policy towards Palestine and Israel since 1945", Institute for Palestine Studies, Washington D.C.
* Andrzej Kapiszewski, "Hugh Gibson and a Controversy over Polish-Jewish Relations after World War I" Jagellonian University, Wydawnictwo i Drukarnia “Secesja”, 1991 (ISBN: 83-233-0505-6)
* Robert D. Schulzinger, "The Making of the Diplomatic Mind", Wesleyan University Press, Middletown, CT, 1975
* Ronald R. Swerczek, "The Diplomatic Career of Hugh Gibson 1908-1938", Ph. D. dissertation, University of Iowa, 1972.
* Ronald E. Swerczek, 'Hugh Gibson and Disarmament, the Diplomacy of Gradualism', in "U.S. Diplomats in Europe, 1919-1941", Edited by Kenneth Paul Jones, ABC-Clio, Santa Barbara, CA,1983.
* Piotr Wandycz, "The United States and Poland", Harvard U.Press, 1980
* Martin Weil, "A pretty good club. The founding fathers of the U.S. Foreign Service", Norton, New York 1978

Films

* "An American in Paris and the Polish Question" ("Amerikanin w Parizu i Sprawa Polska", TV Polonia 2000), two half-hour documentary films by Stefan Szlachtycz devoted the Hugh Gibson and Michael Gibson families.

External links

*gutenberg author
* [http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/interwar/gibson.htm February 9, 1932 Address by Hugh S. Gibson]
* [http://www.ecommcode2.com/hoover/research/historicalmaterials/other/gibson.htm Hugh Gibson Papers]
* Links to "Time" covers:
** [http://www.time.com/time/covers/0,16641,19231126,00.html November 26, 1923 issue]
** [http://www.time.com/time/covers/0,16641,19270718,00.html July 18, 1927 issue]
** [http://www.time.com/time/covers/0,16641,19320208,00.html February 8, 1932 issue]

succession box
title = United States Ambassador to Brazil
before = Edwin V. Morgan
after = Jefferson Caffery
years = 1933 – 1936


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