Practicing History_ Selected Essays - Barbara W. Tuchman [112]
The difficulty was the not unusual one in the conduct of American foreign policy, that the voice of the field was not reaching, or certainly not influencing, the ear at the policy-making level—in this case the President. Out of an old prejudice against career diplomats, justifiable almost anywhere but in China, Roosevelt always felt he would be better informed by a personal envoy—in this case Ambassador Hurley.
The personality of Hurley is a major quirk in this history. One would like to think that historical factors were more rooted in natural law, less haphazard in scope, than the chance character of a minor individual who was neither heroic nor demonic. But history is not law-abiding or orderly and will often respond to a breeze as carelessly as a leaf upon a lake.
It happened that Hurley was a man whose conceit, ambition, and very vulnerable ego were wrapped up in his mission to the point of frenzy. From birth in a miner’s cabin in Oklahoma he had risen through a Horatio Alger boyhood to the practice of law and a lucrative representation of the oil interests of the Choctaw Indians. A later client was Sinclair Oil. He made a fortune of $15 million, served overseas in World War I, became Hoover’s Secretary of War, and coated the rough ebullience of a frontier background with the glossy Republicanism of Andrew Mellon. Tall, handsome, and impressive, he dressed with the care of a Beau Brummel and, when ordered to wear civilian clothes as Ambassador, could only be induced to shed a general’s uniform and medals on the direct intervention of the President. Vanity was Hurley’s security.
His initial assignment to China as special envoy to facilitate the appointment of General Stilwell as commander-in-chief of China’s armed forces had ended in a notable reverse. Instead of Hurley’s cajoling Chiang, Chiang had cajoled Hurley into supporting his demand for Stilwell’s recall. Hurley therefore felt a double need to make a success of coalition. He had wrecked his chances as mediator, however, by allying himself with the Generalissimo for the sake of the Ambassadorship. Hurley was just what Chiang had always wanted in an envoy—a man with direct access to the President and no experience of China, who was easy to manipulate through his vanity. When Ambassador Gauss resigned at the time of Stilwell’s departure, Chiang was only too pleased to ask for Hurley as successor. In a personal message to Roosevelt (sent via T. V. Soong to Hopkins, avoiding the State Department) he solicited a “more permanent” mission for Hurley, who “has my complete confidence” in dealing with the Communists, and would thus be able to make a contribution to the war effort by solving the problem of coalition. Roosevelt was lured; he believed in the efficacy of harmony. If nothing else had worked in China, maybe a person pleasing to Chiang Kai-shek might. Hurley received the appointment and owed it to Chiang.
As a result, he at once convinced himself that his mission and the policy of the United States (“my policy,” as he sometimes called it) were to “prevent the collapse of the National Government” and “to sustain Chiang Kai-shek as President of the Republic and Generalissimo of the Armies.” No such instructions appear in the documents, and despite Hurley’s later claims, they could