Charles R. Crane's Crusade for the Arabs, 1919-39

8/13/2019 Charles R. Crane's Crusade for the Arabs, 1919-39

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Charles R. Crane's Crusade for the Arabs, 1919-39Author(s): F. W. BrecherSource: Middle Eastern Studies, Vol. 24, No. 1 (Jan., 1988), pp. 42-55Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4283221.

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Charles R. Crane's Crusade for the Arabs, 1919-39F. W.Brecher

'ToCHARLESR. CRANE

aptlynicknamedHarunal-Rashid,affectionately'

- GeorgeAntonius,The Arab Awakening, 19381

Charles Crane(1858-1939) was the Americansymbol of friendshipandsupport or the Arab cause in the Near East duringthe inter-warperiod.He achieved this statusin 1919 as co-head of the Commissionof Inquirywhich President Wilson, while at the Paris Peace Conference, sentto the region in order directly to ascertain the political wishes of theformer Ottomansubjects.2The Commission stronglyendorsedthe Arabnationalistview that Franceshould be keptout of the Levant,and thattheZionists should be curbedin Palestine.3Althoughits reyport as shelved4and not madepublic,even unofficially,until late 1922, thevery dispatchof the Commission was seen by many as indicatingAmericanapprovalofthe Arab struggle for self-determination.For example, soon after thecompletionof the Commission'swork,Cranereceiveda letter6 rom 'thePresidentof the Arabic Association andthe Delegate of Palestine' whichstated:The Arab inhabitantsof Syria and Palestine will never forget yourkind deeds, for presenting their rights to the American nation andchangingto good the general idea of the West concerningour cause... We are sure that you still are struggling for our cause.

Crane, ndeed, continued 'to struggle'for the Arab cause.As a private,independentlywealthycitizen,7he cultivatedhis relationswith the Arabsthroughoutthe next two decades by sponsoring an active program of'practicalphilanthropy',8 he most impressive result of which was thediscoveryof oil in easternArabia.With the advent of HitlerianGennany,Crane, n whatwas to be a final burstof energy, worked n Europeand theNearEast to organize a purposeful effortby the Vatican,the Arabs, andGermanyto counter the 'Jewish menace' to the Christianand Islamicworlds.9Despite his denial to Secretaryof State CordellHull, he probablydid finance armspurchases n 1938 by the GrandMufti of Jerusalem,whowas then leading a revolt against British rule in Palestine.'0Earlier, in1922, when popularanti-Frenchdemonstrationserupted during Crane's


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CRANE'S CRUSADE FOR THE ARABS, 1919-39 43visit to Damascus, he was accused by the French of provoking andfinancing revolt in Syria. 'Crane exercised an important influence on the personal attitudestowardthe Middle East of many leading Americans,such as Barnard'sVirginiaGildersleeve,who would take animportantpartin effortsof the1940s to persuade he US government o favor Arabover Zionistgoals inPalestine.Crane's focus on Arab affairs came relativelylate in his remarkablecareer,which also concentrated, n its internationalaspects,on two othergreatbranchesof the human amily,the Slavs andthe Chinese.'3PresidentWilson triedunsuccessfullyfor a full year, 1913-14, to persuadehimto goas US Ambassador o Russia,which he had been visitingandstudyingfordecades.'4After the Bolsheviks came into power in November 1917,Craneplayed a key role in Wilson's fateful decision of August 1918 tointervene n Russia in order 'to rescue' Czech troops there; t was he whointroducedThomasMasarykto Colonel House and the President n June1918, and who worked with that future Presidentto overcome Wilson'shesitancies.'5Masaryk'sson, Jan,would write to Craneon 7 August 1928that the Masaryk family referred to him as the 'godfatherof Czecho-slovakia'.'6 Charles' son, Richard, was the first US Minister to thatcountry.Crane was twice appointedUS Minister to China,whose interestshechampioned,particularlyas againstJapanesedesigns. The firstappoint-ment was in 1909, by William Howard Taft; however, that Presidentrecalledhis outspoken Ministereven before he could arrive at his post.'7Crane did succeed in serving as PresidentWilson's Ministerin Peking,1920-21; andin 1931 wasofficially appointedby the Chineseas 'HonoraryAdvisor to the NationalistGovernment'.'8In domestic affairs, too, Crane was a familiar political and culturalfigure at both the national and local levels. In additionto having beenWoodrow Wilson's Deputy Finance Chairman or his two Presidentialcampaigns,he was Chairmanof the Mayor of Chicago's Commissionon Unemployment and served as an officer in both the MunicipalVoters' League and SenatorRobert La Follette's National ProgressiveRepublicanLeague. Following the loss of close family in a movie housefire,CranesponsoredtheFreemanReport,whichled to the passageof thecountry's first theater fire laws at the tum of the century. Othernote-worthy activities included:endowing a seminal, pioneeringprogram ofRussian studies at the University of Chicago; serving as a foundingdirectorof the MarineBiological Laboratoryat Woods Hole, Massachu-setts, and as a Trustee for the two American Protestant missionarycolleges at Constantinople. He received honorary doctorates fromHarvard and Wisconsin. Among Crane's many, sustained friendshipswere, to mention only the Americans: Henry Ford, George Westing-house, Charles W. Eliot, A. Lawrence Lowell, John Dewey, AlexanderG. Bell, Jane Addams, Lillian Wald, Norman Hapgood, Ida Tarbell,Louis D. Brandeis and Adolph Ochs. He was an honorarypall-beareratWoodrowWilson's funeral.'


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44 MIDDLEEASTERNSTUDIESInsum, CharlesCranewas a significantAmericanfigure,whose impacton his worldhas left a discemible legacy to our own. The purposeof thisarticleis to providea basis for systematicexaminationandevaluationofCrane's work, with particularreference to matters impinging on NearEastem affairs.

IIWhen Crane retumed to Damascus for a visit in 1922, he naturallyreceived an enthusiasticreceptionby thelocal Arableaders,who tooktheoccasion to organize mass protests against France, which had forciblyoccupied Syria in 1920.YCranewas swiftly anddiscreetlyusheredoutofthe area. Shortly thereafter,he leamed from a Cairo source that theFrenchmilitaryauthoritieswereaccusinghim of havingprovided unds toone of the leadingSyriannationalists,Shabendar,or use in financing heviolent demonstrations;and, that there were reports,formally denied bythe French, that he had been sentenced in absentia o 20 years' imprison-ment.2' The episode did not harm his image in the Levant as a staunchdefender of Arab rights.It was during the course of this 1922 visit that Crane received aninvitationfrom Emir Abdullah of Trans-Jordan, ne of the sons of theleader of the ArabwartimerebellionagainstTurkey,King Husseinof theHejaz, to visit his fatherat Jiddah.22 his was accomplished n 1923, atwhichtime Cranewas shown Husssein's (doctored)version of his famouscorrespondence, n Arabic, with Sir HenryMcMahon;at the time of thecorrespondence,1915-16, McMahonwas BritishHigh Commissioner nEgypt. This version had it that McMahonexpressly includedPalestinewithin the teritory of the independentArab state(s) which he said theBritishGovernmentwould support, f Husseinwere to lead an effectiverevolt against the OttomanTurks. Crane was subsequentlyto use thismaterial o makethe case in the UnitedStatesthatEnglandhadpromisedPalestineto the Arabs a full two yearsbeforetheBalfourDeclarationof 2November 1917.23Also of interestis a letter he wrote to Antoniuson 22September1936:

I havejust hada visit with one who knows NearEasternaffairsverywell andalso BritishNearEastem politics. He says thattheForeignOffice has no copy of the papers and promises sent to Hussein. Isuppose the originalhas been stolen andprobablyevery effortin theworld will be made to get hold of Hussein's copy. This man con-firmed Hussein's statement to me of the Govemrnment'sffort,through Lawrence, to get back Hussein's papers ... it is moreimportant hanever thatthe photostaticcopies be as widely and aswisely distributedas possible ...Of course, when GreatBritain in 1939 finally did publish the actualcorrespondence, it was at variance with Hussein's version and was suffi-

ciently ambiguous as to pennit the English to contend that Palestine was,


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CRANE'S CRUSADEFOR THE ARABS, 1919-39 45indeed, excluded from the independent Arab state(s) envisaged byMcMahon.24A finalnote on Crane'scontactswith the Husseinfamily:as late as 1929,when he was over 70 yearsof age, Craneundertookwhatwas, for a non-Arab, a near-unprecedented,arduousoverland trip from Baghdad intothe Wahabidesertto visit King Abdul Aziz ibn-Saud.InBaghdad,Cranehad been the guestof honorof Iraq'sKing Feisal,25 friendsince 1919andanotherof KingHussein's sons. The Saudiand Hussein familieswerelongbitterenemies, and a few years earlier ibn-Saudhad succeeded in dis-placing Hussein from the Hejaz. During the course of his trip, whilenear the Kuwaiti border, Crane's party was attacked, evidently byan independent band of tribesmen, and his travelling companion, theReverendHenryBilkert,was shot dead;Cranehimself escape unhurtbutcut short his tripand left the area.Soon thereafter,on 20 February1929,he received a message from Faisal ibn Abdul Aziz expressing Saudidistressthat'the friend of the Arabs should have been attacked n Arabianlands' and blaming Iraqfor having allowed the attackto occur.

IIICrane's personal, direct contacts with the leaders of the Yemen andSaudi Arabiabegan in the late 1920s, when neitherwas diplomaticallyrecognized by the United States. In 1927, he served as 'unofficial inter-mediary'for the US representativeat Aden, J. LoderPark,in an attemptto elicit from Yemen's ImamYahya, a request for a treatyof friendshipandcommerce.6 While Washingtonquickly squashedPark's initiativeas27premature, Crane did develop a good relationshipwith the Immanand initiated a series of personally financedpublic works projects andmineralssurveys.8 In 1931,Cranepersonallymetibn-Saud,who acceptedhis offer to finance a survey for water resources.29Accordingly, K. S.Twitchell, an Americanengineer who had been conductingthe Crane-financedsurveys in Yemen, was dispatched to Saudi Arabia, where hesoon pointedout to the King the likelihoodthattherewere substantialoildeposits in eastem Arabia. Ibn-SaudauthorizedTwitchell to seek outcommercial arrangements,as a direct result of which ibn-Saudsignedhis first oil exploration contract, in May 1933, with Standard Oil ofCalifornia.Impressively, Crane, while allowing the datacollected at hisexpenseto be usedfreely by StandardOil and others,steadfastlydeclinedlucrative 'offers of participation' in the commercialarrangementsheyhadwith Saudi Arabia;he explainedthathis interestsfrom the startwerepurely philanthropicand would remain that way. This led Twitchell todedicatehis 1947 work, SaudiArabia, as follows:

To the memory of CHARLES R. CRANE the great Americanwhose practical philanthropywas the foundation of the presentdevelopmentof the kingdom of his esteemed friend, King AbdulAziz ibn-Saud.Crane'srelationswithboththe Imam andtheKing enabledhimto play a


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46 MIDDLEEASTERNSTUDIESmediatingrole in the territorialclashes between the two which, in 1934,threatenedto expand into full-scale war. His appeal to Arab solidarityapparentlywas of some influence in the successful defusing of theconfrontation,as suggested by the substantiveand appreciativereportsent to Craneby theKing on the details of his settlementwith the Imam.30Of course, the Palestinian problem figured importantlyin the dis-cussionsCranehadwiththe Saudiking. Duringhis March1931visit, withAntonius serving as interpreterand recorder,Crane stated that 'Russiawas really in the grip of Jews and foreigners ... the King ... added that hehad realized for some time that the Jews were powerfulin Russia'.31 In1933, the King's Minister n Cairoparticipatedn a 'MuslimCommittee'that Cranewas attemptingo organizetherewith a view to its entering ntoformal discussions with the Vatican for the purposeof carryingout aprogram of 'cooperative action ... against the communistic, atheisticonslaught'.32n November 1933 Craneadvisedhis seven-manorganizinggroup,as recordedby Antonius,that

The endeavor on the part of the Jews to return to Asia after anabsence of nearly 2,000 years ... was but another phase of [anorganized campaign against faith and religion] ... About a fortnightago ... he had a conversation with the Papal Secretary [CardinalPacelli, the futurePope Pius XII]. He foundthe lattervery receptiveand interested n the idea ... He [CardinalPacelli] went as far as tosuggest that the Grand Mufti might meet the Latin Patriarch nJerusalemand initiateconversations.Antonius goes on to report that the Muslim representativesassuredCranethatthey would 'appointan authoritative ommittee to go into thematter and initiateconversationswith the CatholicChurch'.Following his return o Rome from Cairo,Craneheld furthermeetings

attheVatican,where hehad 'adaywith theNuncio whowasgoing down toEgypt,Palestine andcountriesnearby,and his instructionswere to get intouch with this MuslimCommittee andworkout some practicalmethodsof proceeding'.33There is no evidence in the materialavailable to thepresentwriterthatthis Muslim-Vaticandialogueever actuallygot startedas a direct consequenceof Crane'sefforts.Cranemet ReichschancellorHitler in Berlin on 6 October as a pre-liminary step to his meetings in Rome and Cairo. The session wasarrangedor himby US AmbassadorWilliamDodd,a formerProfessorofHistory at the Universityof Chicago,following Crane'srequest n a letterof 17 September:

I have importantengagements in Rome the latterpartof Octoberwith the highest Prelatesthere [on 'the Jewish problem'] and inci-dentalmatters.Beforegoing thereI wishverymuch thatI couldhavea heartto hearttalk quietly with Mr. Hitler.In a letter which apparentlycrossed with Crane's AmbassadorDodd

had written him on 16 September34hat


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CRANE'S CRUSADEFOR THE ARABS, 1919-39 47When I have occasion to speak unofficiallyto eminentGermans,Ihave saidvery franklythatthey had a seriousproblembut thattheydid not knowhow to solve it. The Jewshad heldagreatmanymoreofthe key positions in Germanythan their numbersor their talentsentitled them to ...

On 5 November 1933, Cranewrote to Lowell that Dodd 'arranged orme to have a full free talk with the Reichschancellor'.Following hismeeting with Hitler, Crane made highly complimentaryremarksto thepress about him, includingthat his 'gestures andpoint blankstatementsremindme of TheodoreRoosevelt'.Crane would be a repeatguest of Dodd's in Berlin. For example, hewroteon 18 June 1834: 'Dr. Doddhas askedme to come andstaywithhim... and haspromisedsome good interviews'.On24 July 1935,he wrotetoDodd: 'I am especially indebtedto you for the nice luncheonpartyandthe cordial talk with Dr. Schacht ... I think that Germanyis now wellaroundthe cornerwith her moralehigher than the morale of any otherpeople in Europe'.That Dodd had an extra-curricularnterestin Crane'sphilanthropic ctivities is evidentin a lettertheAmbassadorwrotehimon19 September 1935, asking on a private and confidentialbasis that heconsiderendowinga chair atthe Universityof Virginiafortheteachingof'objective' US and world history.As inthecase of Crane'sdiscussions withibn-Saud,his exchangesaboutPalestinewith the GrandMufti of Jerusalem,Haj Amin al-Husseini,andotherArab leaders in the Levant,as recordedby Antonius,turnedon thegeneralagreementthat therewas, in 1931,

a real menace directed at Islam and Christianity,and that it wasessential that the aims and motives of the Soviet leaders be madeknown and understood ... [Crane went on to say that] in theparticular case of Palestine, this question took on a particularsignificance, because of the fact that the Jews who had designs onPalestinewere closely in sympathywith the subversive aims of theSoviets.

In 1933, Cranetold the Mufti that,it was a matter of common knowledge (which the experience ofRussiahad amplydemonstrated) hatthe politicalJews everywhereaimedat the eventualdestructionof religiouslife. The only Churchin the Westwhich seemedto him to be fully alive to thatdanger,andto possess thenecessarypowersandorganization o dealwithit, wasthe Catholic Church ...

As late as 20 July 1938, when the Mufti was clandestinely eading anarmedrevolt againstBritish rule in Palestine, CranewroteAntonius: 'Ienclosealittle checkfortheGrandMuftiwhichplease give him touse as hethinksbest'. Despitethis action,he wouldon 6 October1938, write to MrsCordell Hull: 'Please also tell Cordell that ... my relations with [myMoslem friends]have been entirelypeaceful and cultural(waterworks,


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48 MIDDLEEASTERNSTUDIESbridges,roadways, etc.), andI have never spent a penny for any kind ofmilitaryequipment'.On the basis of this evidence alone,one would haveto be skepticalabout the truthof other denialsby Cranethathe financedillegal arms purchases - for the Syrian, Shabendar, n 1922, as notedabove;and for the anti-Bolshevik CossackGeneral,Kalidin,in 1917-18,as was 'the suspicionamongAmericanofficials thenservingin Russia'.36

IVThe other side of Crane's Near East coin, which gave his work in thatregion much of its context andenergy,was his profoundconcernabout he'Jewish menace' to the established, religious-basedcivilizations of theworld, with the Anglo-Saxon people at the center.37It is not a question of whether,but to whatextent, Cranewas activelyengaged in the dissemination of anti-Semiticmaterials,generallyof thekind most closely associated with the output of Tsarist Russia. Evenbefore the Russo-JapaneseWar of 1904-05, when the productionofthese materials flowered with publication of the gross forgery, TheProtocols of the Elders of Zion,8 Crane is known to have distributed'Yiddishliterature',as acknowledge by his friend,the futureSecretaryofthe InteriorunderTaft, WalterL. Fisher, who 'greatly enjoyed' it. By1910, Cranehad latched on to the Protocol's core idea, that there was amillenia-oldJewish-Freemasonyconspiracyto dominatethe world. Thisis broughtout most clearly in a letterto him of 27 August 1910, fromhisgood friend,the British writerand Ambassador,JamesBryce, who wasabout to departon a trip to LatinAmerica:

I will do my best to makeinquiriesand ascertainanythingI canwithregard o the singularmasonicmovement. Fromtime to time I haveheard things about its influence in Eastem and SouthernEurope,butnever, so far,in LatinAmerica.Some of the other facts you tellme, especially regarding he Jews, are quite new to me. I suppose[themasonicmovement]haseverywherea stronganti-clericalandinsome cases even anti-religiouscharacter.The Roman Church, ofcourse, everywhereopposes it.

Not bashfulabouthis views, Crane wrotedirectlyto PresidentWilsonon 10 February1913 that,except for Brandeis,'all of the otherimportantJews arefirstJewsand thenAmericansand do nothesitateto sacrificereal, 39American nterestsatanytimefor whattheyconceive to be Jewishones .In writingthis, Cranepresumablyhad most in mind Jacob Schiff, who,since at least 1909, had been his be?tenoire. He blamed Schiff for hisrecall by President Taft as U.S. Minister to China.' That action, hefelt, was the result of a Japanese-Jewish cabal against him, becausehe had been an outspokendefenderof Russia andopponentof the 1905indemnificationaward to Japanby mediatorTheodoreRoosevelt; and,becausehe defended Chinese interestsagainstthe combinedeffortsof theJapanese and Jewish New York bankers, such as Schiff, to raid that


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CRANE'S CRUSADEFOR TIHEARABS, 1919-39 49country'sresources.As Crane on 13 June 1933, was to write to ColonelHouse:

I seemed to be the only outspoken friendthe Russians had ... anti-Semite - it ought to be a title of honor ... [Taft]was hypnotizedbyTeddy's doctrineof giving the Jews at least all they wanted ...Also, soon after the incident of the recall itself, Crane wrote to hisassociate and adviseron Chinese affairs,Thomas F. Millard,that it wasthe Schiff/Warburggroupof 'HamburgJews' which got Taft to firehim;Millardfully agreed, perhaps n partbecause it was withhis guidancethatCranehadgiven animpolitic speech in New York on the Chinaquestion,aspeech which contributed o Taft's disillusionwith him. Still again,on 5April 1916, Cranewrote that the GermanJews

with Mr. Schiff at the head ... have for a long time controlled thebridgebetweenRussia andAmericaandso the 98 million Christiansherehave had no relations with the 170 million over there [theU.S.having had broken relations with Russia underPresidentTaft as aresult of TsaristdiscriminationagainstAmericanJews].Crane maintained that the Bolshevik Revolution represented'not a

revolutionbut a conquest' of Russiaby the Jews.4 From the time of thatevent,he would see the Jews as a monolithicgroup: Therightwing of fineJews which charmourintellectualscut no ice in theorganization even inPalestine), the left wing runningright over it as it does everythingandeveryone else, but the right wing has to keep mum, however much itdisapproves.42 In a remarkabledisplay of ideology overridingwhat hadhithertobeen a warm friendship, Crane also could now say of LillianWald, that sheplayed a very importantrole in bringing aboutthe Russian Revo-lution.Trotskywas alwaysintouchwith her andfollowedher orders.Shealways couldget anyamountof money from theSchiff-Warburgfarriily,and the night beforeTrotsky sailed for Russia, he andJacobSchiff had a secret meeting at Miss Wald's, andSchiff turned overfifty thousand dollars to Trotsky to use shepherdinghis flock toRussia.43

Interestingly,this story is similar to that contained in a (forged) docu-ment, publishedin 1919 by a monarchist oumal at Rostov-on-the-Don,which was attributedto 'the American Secret Service' and allegedlyprovedthat the Bolsheviks received a large subsidy from Schiff to carryout the revolution.44Going backeven further,Protocol'sfolkloreincludesthe myth45hat

The RussianGovemment had leamed that at meetings of the B'naiB'rithin New York in 1893, Jacob Schiff had been namedchairnanof the Committeeon the revolutionarymovementin Russia.The distinct - and intriguing - possibility should not be overlooked that

the 'American Secret Service' source of the Russian monarchist article is


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50 MIDDLEEASTERNSTUDIESthe very same as the 'State DepartmentSecret Police' sourcethatCrane,in a letter of 5 February 1921, used as the basis for the above-citedstoryof Schiff giving Trotsky50 thousand dollars. In fact, a certainUSArmy Intelligenceofficer based in New York late in the war, HarrisA.Houghton, MD, is generally credited with having published the firstAmericanedition of the Protocols,underthe title TheJewishPeril;he didso, anonymously, n 1920. Houghtonhad obtained he materialduringthewarfrom an ex-Tsaristagent, Boris Brasal, and, in 1919, sought supportfor its broaddissemination;he also conducteda pressbriefingon it on 9February1919, in New York.`6Crane was in the city at that time and, particularlygiven his owninterests,may well have known of Houghton'sefforts.Moreover,he andHoughton had several mutual acquaintances.For example, they bothknew Maurice Leon, who was a Jewish lawyerin New Yorkwho helpedBrasal, Houghton and, later, Henry Ford to identify 'Gernan Jewishtraitors' o the US;47and, theyknew C.C. Daniels, the brotherof Wilson'sSecretaryof the Navy, J. Daniels - C.C. not only had Houghtonas hisfamily physician but also helped Crane's friend, Ford, carry out hisanti-Semiticcampaign as a paid staff-member.' Given these facts, andrecalling that Crane was intimately involved in Kalidin's anti-Bolshevikcause, which was based precisely in the Cossack region where themonarchistjoumal was published, one cannot discount the likelihoodthathe andHoughton co-operated n havingProtocol material 'as widelyandas wisely distributedaspossible'.49Theircommongoal was to alert heUS to the truesignificanceof the Bolshevik movementin Russiaandtheneed actively to oppose it.Finally, it should be noted that even in 1926, when many leadingAmericanshad long rejected Ford's anti-Semiticcampaign,j and Fordhimselfwas on the verge of disowning it,5 Craneon 18 Novemberwas stillsendinghim additionalpropaganda, thinkingthat it might possibly be ofinterestto you or to your editor'.

VBefore the Bolshevik Revolution, Crane was able to speak in positivetermsabout individualJews andeven about a worldJewish political rolefor the Jewish people, such as theirserving as a 'naturalbridge betweenEuropeand Asia'.s This tinge of pro-Zionismwas consistentwith Crane'sletter of 30 September 1914, recounting his recent conversation withPresidentWilson:

I discussed ... the situation of the Jews of the world and what weshouldtry to do for them when peace comes. This I had gone overwith Mr. Brandeis [the head of the AmericanZionists] on my lastvisit with him. He is fast becoming the most importantJew in theworld ... inspired with longing to serve his race and especially thepoorest and most down-trodden ...This drawing of distinctions, as has been noted, ended with the Revo-


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CRANE'S CRUSADE FOR THEARABS, 1919-39 51lution,and, by the time of the First Administration f FranklinRoosevelt,Cranewould write Fortunemagazineon 30 May 1933 to complain about'Felix Frankfurter the very efficienteyes and earsof Brandeis rightinthe center of everything ...'. Similarly, he was to write to Colonel Houseon 4 February1933, that

It looks as thoughFranklinhas fallen entirelyinto [Jewish]hands.With Felix Frankfurtern the center of the Administration, s a sortof Benes, the really last word will come from the SupremeCourt[i.e., Brandeis]andthe race'senormouscapacityformischief will beexercisedeverywherewithouta whisperor anopposinggesturefromus.Theissue of US immigration aws was amajor ocus of Crane'sattentionduring he 1920s and1930s. He foughtfortightening hose laws:53If therewere a Jewishquota,as there shouldbe, the numbersof course would beverysmall,buttheyevade theletterof the law by cominginundernationalnames'.Inthe 1930s, he warnedagainstJewishefforts to control he office of theLabor Secretary 'on account of its influence on immigration'S On 28January1936, he wrote to the Presidenton the subjectof

amovementunderway o bringsomething ike a 100,000Jews out ofGermany ... There are 100,000 too many people in Palestine alreadyand ... the Jews now own most of the valuable land. The place of allplaces for the Jews to go is Russia.In a letterof 24 May 1933, publishedby the New YorkTimes, Cranewrote that'The Germansare the best inforrned boutconditions n Russia

... [The Nationalist Government] is going to block the Communists ...Palestineis wide open to Communistrefugees'.A major disappointmentto Crane was Roosevelt's 1933 diplomaticrecognitionof the Soviet Union - an act which Cranedubbed 'Jewishrecognition He wroteto Lowell on 29 Novemberof thatyear:'It seemsto me thatGermanyhas practically akenoverthe moralleadershipof theworld'. However, in June 1937, following a visit to the USSR, Craneremarkablychanged his tune. He now pronouncedthat the Russianpeople had regainedcontrolof theircountry;Russia, he wroteRoosevelton24 October1937,has a 'newpermanentwavewhichIthinkwill setquitea fashion in the next forty or fifty years'.Knowingly or not, Crane, by this reversalof position, preparedthegroundfor what otherwisewould have been for him, had he lived a bitlongerinto 1939, a totaldisaster: he Molotov-RibbentropPact.Herewasa vivid justification, if one can be found, for Virginia Gildersleeve'scallingCranea 'genius', if an 'unusualandeccentric'one. Inthis instance,withHitler n 1939-41 embracingnotonlytheRussiansbut alsotheGrandMufti, the propheticCrane, had he been able to observe these events,couldonlyhavebasked ntheglory of seeingtheapparentulfillmentof hisfondestdreams:the drawingtogetherof his beloved Russianpeople with


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CRANE'S CRUSADEFOR THE ARABS, 1919-39 53Like Cranebeforeher,Gildersleeveservedas Chairman f the Boardof Trusteesof theAmericanCollege for Girls at Constantinople.13. Crane's selections of these off-the-beaten-path ands followed naturallyfrom theimpulse behind his inveterate travels: as a young man suffering from 'melancholy' and,nervousillness', he beganto travel 'not for tourismor study,butfor excitement'.14. A.S. Link (ed.), ThePapersof WoodrowWilson,55 Volumes, to date, Vol. 28, p.353and Vol. 30, p.46.15. Ibid., Vol. 48, p.273; Vol. 49, p.154. Also T.G. Masaryk,The Makingof a State(1969), pp.273, 275.16. Jan was then married to one of Crane's daughters, Frances.17. Taft acted, because of Crane's 'inability to curb his tongue in public and his headstrongdesire to shape rather than execute policy'. D. Anderson, William Howard Taft (NewYork, 1968), p.245.18. Telegram to CRC from the Chinese Government, 16 January 1931.

19. Communication from Mrs W. Wilson, 23 February 1924.20. CRC Memoirs (unpublished), p.343.21. Letter to CRC, 11 June 1922.22. CRC letter, 8 January 1923.23. For example, letter to Congressman Fish, Jr., 19 May 1933. King Hussein's mis-representations of his correspondence with Sir McMahon are fully documented in ElieKedourie, In the Anglo-Arab Labyrinth: The McMahon-Husayn Correspondence andits Interpretations, 1914-1939 (London, 1976), pp.224 ff.24. The standard work on the Correspondence is Kedourie, In the Anglo-Arab Labyrinth,which includes a detailed discussion of the attempt by Husayn to represent hiscorrespondence with McMahon as other than it really was. Also see Frank W. Brecher,'Scholarship and the Diplomatic Roots of Israel', Jewish Social Studies (Spring, 1985).For the authoritative text of the correspondence, and the respective views of the BritishGovernment and the Arab Delegations in London at the time, see UK Foreign Office:Miscellaneous Papers 3 (1939), CMD 5957.25. CRC letter, 4 January 1929. Crane had been a good friend of Feisal's since their 1919meeting in Damascus, and he kept a bust of that leader in his home.26. US State Department, Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States Vol.III for 1927, p.825, telegram from Vice-Consul Park, 15 March 1927; also letter toCrane from Park, 27 July 1927.27. Ibid, pp.826-7: the State Department advised Park on 20 May 1927 that the US was'not yet prepared to accord formal recognition to the native states which have beenestablished in the Arabian peninsula since the World War', because of unsettledpolitical conditions there and 'the unimportance of American interests'. On 10February 1931, the US decided to continue to decline to recognize Yemen, but, withregard to Saudi Arabia, the State Department informed the UK that 'there appears tobe no reason, however, why this Government should not recognize the Government ofKing Ibn Saud, provided that it is possible to obtain certain assurances from thatGovernment', such as Most Favored Nation economic treatment and justice forforeigners. (Ibid., Vol. II for 1931, pp.547-50). Recognition was extended in May1931, and one can reasonably conclude that Crane played a facilitating role in thisdevelopment. It was not until February 1940 that the US appointed an Ambassador toSaudi Arabia, although resident in Cairo. (Ibid., Vol. IV for 1939, pp.824-8)

28. Letter from Imam Yahya of Yemen, 27 December 1927; and Twitchell, Saudi Arabia,op. cit., passim.29. After his 1931 visit, Crane described the King, as 'a fine type, much like Father Crane,Edison, Ford, Westinghouse - the great natural human brain entirely unspoiled byeducation except the education of vital experience'. Crane himself had an incompleteformal education, being obliged to drop out of his first year at Stevens Institute ofTechnology by physical and emotional illness. For the sources of the text's discussion ofCrane's philanthropic work in Arabia, see Twitchell, Saudi Arabia, op. cit., pp. 143 ff.30. CRC letter, 18 June 1934.31. Antonius' notes on Crane's trips of the 1930s to Saudi Arabia and the Levant areseparately filed in CRC Papers.


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54 MIDDLE EASTERNSTUDIES32. CRCletter,13 May 1933;andAntonius'reportof 20 December1933,on Crane'sCairomeeting of 24 November1933. The seven-mangroupwhichmet with Crane ncluded,in addition to the Saudi representative, l-Sabiq,RashidRida, ShafikPasha(OrientalLeague), al-Bakri(religious leader), Wali Pashi (ex-CabinetMinister),Abdel-Razek(theologian),andal-Maraghi pastand futurerectorof Al-Azhar).33. CRCletter, 31 January1934.34. Dodd's view on the power of the Jews in Germanywas remarkably imilarto thatofPresident Roosevelt, as reported by David Wyman, who refutes the alleged factsunderlyingthat view (D. Wyman, The Abandonment f the Jews (Pantheon,1985),p.313). Remarkably,Rooseveltused these 'facts' in a conversation n 17 January1943at Casablancawith Vichy's Resident Generalof Morocco, GeneralNogues, to urgethat 'the numberof Jews engaged in the practice of the professions ... should bedefinitely imited to the percentage hattheJewishpopulation n NorthAfrica bearstothe whole of the NorthAfricanpopulation.(See USForeignRelations,StateDepart-

ment, Volume on The Conferences at Washington, 1941-1942, and Casablanca, 1943,pp.606-8.)35. As reported n an obituaryon Cranepublishedby the New YorkHeraldTribune,16February1939.36. 'It was the suspicionamongAmericanofficials thenservingin Russia that Mr.Cranehimself was at that time giving private financialsupportto Kalidin.' (G. Kennan,Soviet-American Relations, 1917-1920 (1945), Vol. I, pp.l176-7). Kennan goes on tosay that, 'it would not be unreasonableto suppose that Crane, too, urged [U.S.]governmental upportto the Kalidin-Alksylev movement ...'; and thatsuch privatesupportas Crane's lacked 'legal authorization'.37. Crane himself was not concerned about the dogma of any particularreligion ordenomination(he was by family backgrounda Presbyterian),but rather about 'thegreatspiritualmovementsof the world' (CRC letter,10 November1926).38. N. Cohn,Warrantor Genocide(1969), passim.It should be noted that neither n thatwork nor in any of the following references to published materialconcerning theProtocols, Ford'santi-Semiticcampaign,etc., is Crane's namementioned.39. Link (ed.), The Papers of Woodrow Wilson, op. cit., Vol. 27, pp. 107-8.40. CRClettersof 26 November1909;5 April 1916; 12 December1923.Also, letters romThomasF. Millardof 25 October1909; andCharlesW. Eliot of 12 January1915.41. CRCletterto PresidentCoolidge,22 October1926. Similarly, n a speechof 2 February1922, at the National WarCollege in Washington,he maintained hat Jews were the'proprietors f the Far EasternRepublic' and the 'backbone' of the Soviet's centralgovernmentand its machinery.Manyotherexamplesareavailableof Crane'seffort toequatethe Bolsheviks with the Jews, who representeda threat o dominate he worldand, therefore, hould be actively opposed by the US and the world'scivilizations.42. CRC letter, 21 February 1931, reportingon what he had just told Arab leaders inJerusalem.43. CRC lettersof 5 February1921, and 14 December 1934. Despite this, he could stillwriteWald a mostfriendly etteron 8 February1935, in whichhe confessesthat'I havefelt verydefinitelyoutof theworldfor severalyearsand not verymuch interestedn it'.In one of fate's coincidences,Crane n March1917happened o take thesame shipfromNew York as Trotsky, both heading, for opposite reasons, to post-TsaristRussia;Cranefrequentlydrew on his alleged direct observationsof Trotsky and his friendsduring this voyage (Trotskywas taken off the ship at Halifax by the British, whoretainedhim for a few weeks) to buttresshis criticismsof the Bolsheviks, whom heregularlyreferred o as 'New YorkEast Siders'.44. Cohn, Warrant or Genocide, op. cit., p. 126.45. H. Bernstein, The TruthAbout the Protocols of Zion (1935), p.38; the author notes that'Schiff was never an officeror chairmanof any Committeeof the B'nai B'rith'.46. For materialon Houghton, see ibid, passim; and the press clips in the file of HenryFord at theAmericanJewish Committee ibrary,particularlyhe series by N. Hapgoodin Hearst's International (June-November 1922).47. Ibid,and,re the Crane-Leonconnection,see Gottheil etter to CRC, 5 July 1913.48. AJC files, op. cit.


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CRANE'S CRUSADEFOR THE ARABS, 1919-39 5549. Section II of the present text, the quotationregardingCrane's view of the Hussein-McMahoncorrespondence.50. On 16 January1921, manyleading Americans, ncludingPresidentWilson andHenryC. King, signed a press statementobjecting to HenryFord's anti-Semiticcampaign.Crane, at the time, was in China. Upon his return,he developeda closer relationshipwith Ford,who reportedly aid of him (CRCletter of 25 January1926) that 'I was theonly one who really understoodhim'. Crane, n 1922, failed to get Eliot to invite theFords for a visit, Eliot explaining, in an August 3 letter to Crane, that, among otherobjections, I should feel ratherqueer nviting[the Fords]to come over to see me ... hisanti-semiticcampaignhas seemed to mepositively pernicious'.Of course, n the 1920s,Hitler decoratedFordand incorporatedhe Protocols nto his own writings.51. He did so in a 1927 letterto theAmericanJewishCommitteeunder he pressureof a lawsuit by the above-mentionedH. Bernstein.52. CRC letter, 2 March1916.53. CRC letter to SaturdayEveningPost, 18 November1926.54. CRCletter,2 December1932.55. CRC letter,21 October 1933.56. In the 1930s, Cranefrequentlygave it as his view that London and Washingtonhadalready been captured by the Jews; and, that Palestine was no longer a 'Britishmandate'buta 'Jewish mandate'.

Charles R. Crane's Crusade for the Arabs, 1919-39

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Transcript of Charles R. Crane's Crusade for the Arabs, 1919-39