edited by
THOMAS E. HACHEY
Cincinnati Through English
Spectacles: A British Diplomat's
Confidential View in 1945
In the months immediately following the
Second World War, British consuls sta-
tioned throughout the United States
forwarded to the London Foreign Office a sub-
stantial number of telegrams, memoranda,
and dispatches regarding the climate of
American opinion toward England. What
Winston Churchill had called "the Grand
Alliance" seemed, in the judgment
of many of these diplomats, to be an increasingly
tenuous liaison.l The post-war world
contained new and often divisive circumstances
in contradistinction to the unity
produced by a common cause in the period of hos-
tilities. Some of the consuls cautioned
against allowing satisfaction with the Allied
victory to obscure the implications and
significance of another reality: the likelihood
that British dependence upon the United
States would become progressively greater
in the years ahead. All seemed to agree
that promoting goodwill with the Americans
should be one of the highest priorities
of His Majesty's Government. Indeed, the
London Foreign Office had undertaken a
comprehensive effort to propagandize
Americans during the period immediately
preceding World War II,2 and had con-
tinued that effort under somewhat
different guises during the larger part of that
conflict.3 The future need
for amicable Anglo-American relations was certainly
apparent to Foreign Office officials in
1945 and they accorded the closest scrutiny
to recommendations by British consuls in
the United States regarding how that end
might best be achieved.4 One
of the most engaging of these communications was a
dispatch which London received on
November 5, 1945 from Arthur H. Tandy, the
British consul at Cincinnati. So
impressed by this dispatch was the Foreign Office
1. These documents, arranged by calendar
years, are among both the Foreign Office general
correspondence files (F.O. 371) and its
consular files (F.O. 115) located at the London Public
Record Office.
2. See Thomas E. Hachey,
"Winning Friends and Influencing Policy: British Strategy to Woo
America in 1937," Wisconsin
Magazine of History, LV (Winter 1971-1972), 120-129.
3. See F. 0. 371/30652-30727;
34086-34091; 38501-38676; 44535-44550 which contain a
substantial number of documents
attesting to this effort between the years 1942 and 1945.
4. In addition to the Foreign Office
minutes contained in volumes like F.O. 371/44615, see
also the Foreign Office private
collections (F.O. 800) and Foreign Office Confidential Print
(F.O. 401-490) for further evidence of
this sentiment.
Mr. Hachey is Associate Professor of
History, Marquette University, Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
280 OHIO
HISTORY
that it printed several copies and
circulated them among members of the British Cab-
inet for their guidance and instruction.5
Arthur Tandy was educated at Magdalen
College, Oxford, and the first assignment
of his foreign service career in 1929
was to the British consulate in Philadelphia.
Thereafter, Tandy served as acting
consul-general at Los Angeles and, in November
1939, was appointed consul at New York.
He remained at that post until March 10,
1943, when he was transferred as consul
to the recently established British consulate
at Cincinnati. In his dispatch of more
than two years later, Tandy sought to justify
sustaining such consulates as the one at
Cincinnati even though the war-time exigen-
cies which had inspired their
establishment no longer existed. His report, however,
extends far beyond the scope of such a
rationale and constitutes a well informed anal-
ysis of both Cincinnatians and Americans
from the perspective of a professionally
trained foreign observer.
Facts and opinions are liberally mixed
in Tandy's report, and his prognostications
vary from the highly fallible to the
remarkably prophetic. Tandy found Cincinnati
insular and parochial, isolated not only
from Europe and the world, but also from
other regions of the United States. He
viewed the community as a faded Queen City,
one in which life by 1945 had become
mired in lethargy, due partly to the static
nature of existence at the river level,
and partly to the blandness of the stodgy Ger-
man-American population. In his
observations concerning discrimination toward
Jews and Negroes in Cincinnati, Tandy
predicted that prejudice toward the latter in
the United States had created a social
problem which was destined to result in future
strife. On a national level, the British
diplomat deemed that a majority of the Amer-
ican public suffered from chronic mental
and emotional instability. He was particu-
larly concerned that a combination of
simple ignorance, latent Anglophobia and
America's instinctive isolationist
impulse might result in a serious chasm between the
United States and Great Britain. Tandy
recommended that the London Government
direct a concentrated program for the
enlightenment of American youth whom he
believed were more educable than their
elders since the latter often held irreconcilable
anti-British biases. A large part of his
report was intended to illustrate how effective
British consulates like the one in
Cincinnati could be in facilitating that task and how
their continuance was therefore
essential.
Documents such as British Consul Tandy's
dispatch to the London Foreign Office
normally would have remained closed to
public view for several more years even
under the reduced restrictions of the
Public Records Act of 19676 had it not been
for a Parliamentary ruling in 1971 which
authorized the opening of government
archives through the year 1945. These
heretofore unavailable archival sources were
accordingly declassified, arranged by
subject headings, and made available at the
5. Dispatch No. 1363, British Embassy,
Washington, D.C., to the Foreign Office, London,
October 26, 1945. F.O. 371/44615.
Enclosed in this dispatch was Arthur Tandy's own report
from the consulate at Cincinnati. The
latter was given limited circulation among members of the
British Cabinet as a part of the file
known as the Foreign Office Confidential Print.
6. Access to British Government archives
is presently governed by the Public Records Act of
1967, which introduced from January 1,
1968, a "thirty year rule," opening the records then to
the end of 1937 and making provision
thereafter for the annual advancement of the open date on
January 1 of each year. A few papers are
closed for fifty years by virtue of the Lord Chancellor's
instruments under Section 5 (i) of the
1958 Public Records Act.
7. The suspension of the 1967 Public
Records Act was intended to assist scholars engaged
in studies which extend over the entire
period of World War II. Other than this specific excep-
tion so generously authorized by
Parliament, the "thirty year rule" is still in force.
Cincinnati, 1945 281
London Public Record Office for the
first time in the summer of 1972.7 The value
of these sources for the student of
Anglo-American relations is manifest in the num-
ber of insights afforded by pertinent
portions of the document which follows. Both
the perceptivity of the author and the
unique qualities of the region about which
he writes contribute to making the
report by the British consul at Cincinnati distinc-
tive and exceptional. Moreover, the
unconscious elitism and traces of condescension
discernable in this dispatch, despite a
genuine effort at objectivity, reveal at least as
much about the British diplomat as they
do about the people of Cincinnati. Mr.
Tandy's report begins:8
"The British Consulate at
Cincinnati is one of the four new independent consular
posts created in the interior of the
United States in the latter part of 1942 and early
1943, the other three being Denver,
Kansas City and St. Paul-Minneapolis.
* *
*
"The creation and conduct of such
posts was inevitably experimental. This report,
based upon two years' experience at one
of them, is submitted in the belief that the
present is an appropriate moment to
assess the worth and effectiveness of the new
consulates in the United States, now
that the abnormal conditions in which they have
operated (and to meet which their
creation was largely designed) have been brought
to an end by the conclusion of the World
War.
"By contrast with its notable
contribution to the growth and development of nearly
every great city in the United States,
British stock in Cincinnati is comparatively neg-
ligible both in numbers and influence.
The population is basically German, origina-
ting in the 1848 migrations, the
Germanic influx continuing fairly steady until the
outbreak of the first World War. There
is also a substantial Italian and a smaller
Irish element; but of comparative
newcomers of English, Scottish or Canadian birth,
of the type so prominent in business and
professional life in other large American
cities, no more than a handful. In fact
there are hardly any British subjects in Cin-
cinnati at all and very few in the
consular district. Why, then, open a British con-
sulate? Our critics did not fail to
raise the question. It could be fairly effectively
countered by informing them that until
recently, in proportion to the population, the
United States had for many years
maintained rather more consular posts in Britain,
and those situated in rather smaller
cities, than had Britain in the United States. Prior
to the war the figures were twelve
United States Consulates in Britain (population
45 million) and twenty British
Consulates in the United States (population 130
million). And if Bradford with less than
300,000 inhabitants was worth a consul,
it could be held that Cincinnati had a
rather better claim with its more than half a
million. True there are few British
subjects in Cincinnati; but neither is there any
large number of American citizens in
Birmingham. The effect of these statistics
could be followed up by pointing out
that, before the creation of the new posts, the
British consular district of St. Louis
contained both Kentucky and Colorado within
its boundaries and thus comprised a
territory stretching from the Appalachians to
the Rockies, a distance of 1,500 miles,
the width of Europe excluding Russia. No
8. Approximately one-third of the text
was deleted since no purpose would be served by
including Tandy's narration of facts or
events which may have been unfamiliar to foreign
readers but are commonplace knowledge to
most Americans. Sections of the dispatch dealing
with Kentucky and West Virginia were
also omitted since they were only incidental to the main
report on Cincinnati. Otherwise the
vagaries of spelling, capitalization, and paragraphing have
been followed exactly as in the original
typed manuscript.
282 OHIO HISTORY
argument was needed to establish the
contention that so huge a district could not be
effectively covered from a single
centre.9
"From this large and unmanageable
area the new Cincinnati district took away the
whole of Kentucky, except the
southwestern corner known as the Purchase; from
Detroit it inherited a fringe of
Southern Ohio counties skirting the northern bank
of the Ohio River; and from Baltimore
the western half of West Virginia. The
Southern Ohio strip is a region of
prosperous farming and imperturbable mental
outlook. Throughout this region the Taft
family name and influence still command
strong loyalties; and geographical
remoteness, traditional self-reliance and economic
well-being combine to minimise the
significance of international events. Hostility
to the foreigner begins close to home.
Washington and New York are at times the
object of antagonisms and suspicions hardly
less acute than those directed more
continuously at Britain and Russia. It
is in such rural areas, in the opinion of the
writer, even more than in the Middle
Western cities, that the hard core of American
isolationism lies.
* *
*
"Cincinnati still wears the title
of Queen City of the West conferred upon her by
[Henry Wadsworth] Longfellow,10 but
it recalls lost opportunities no less than former
pre-eminence. Long before Chicago had
mushroomed to notoriety and fortune, Cin-
cinnati was the undisputed Mid-Western
metropolis, the prevailing steamboat travel
of the era bringing to its banks a
colourful and aggressive throng of pioneers, as well
as many contemporary European
celebrities, including [Charles] Dickens and [Wil-
liam Makepeace] Thackeray. Here, too,
Mrs. [Frances Milton] Trollope gathered
gall for her celebrated volume,
"The Domestic Manners of the Americans," and her
Bazaar gave America its first and
probably least successful department store. It was
not solely the decline of the
stern-wheeler and the coming of the railroad that ended
this golden age. The conservatism of the
people also played its part. The predomi-
nant German population has been true to
type not only in its virtues but also in its
limitations. Thrifty and industrious, a
high percentage of them home owners with
a commendably negligible tax delinquency
record, favoured too by a well-diversified
industry (machine tools, soap, meat
packing, plastics and paper), they have not been
conspicuous for taking chances. Only
last year the City declined, among a number of
new industrial projects, a proposal of
General Motors to build an automobile body
plant in the suburbs. Few communities,
on the eve of reconversion and with the
bogey of depression round the corner,
would have looked such a gift horse in the
mouth. But Cincinnati did so and for an
interesting reason. The proposed factory
would have encroached on a zoned
residential district. The City Planning Commis-
sion, disregarding the protests of the
press and Chamber of Commerce, took the
view that human and family values and
the contractual obligations arising from homes
built in reliance upon the permanence of
healthy and agreeable surroundings out-
weighed the promised economic benefits
of the new factory. The Commission may
also have reflected that it was better
to leave well alone, and that a city with 90 per
cent of its population American-born
could do without the motley and heterogeneous
9. The British Government terminated the
consulate at Cincinnati in September 1958 after
determining that English interests in
that region could be sufficiently served by the British con-
sulate general at Cleveland, which is
still in operation.
10. Tandy is in error since Longfellow
was but 27 years old and had not begun his writing
career in 1834, a date by which the term
"Queen City of the West" was already in common
usage. See Alvin E. Harlow, The
Serene Cincinnatians (New York, 1950), 33.
Cincinnati, 1945
283
influx which the automobile industry
invariably attracts and the concomitant labour
troubles which have long plagued
Cleveland and Detroit. But the decision, which
is not an isolated instance and has been
paralleled in the past, explains why Cincinnati
has failed to match the growth of
Cleveland, Detroit and Chicago.
"The writer, who has now had
experience of United States posts both on the East-
ern and Pacific seaboards as well as the
Middle West, found Cincinnati unique in one
minor but interesting respect. He has
never before lived in an American city where
prominent business and professional men
engage in intellectual hobbies and are not
afraid of owning up to them. Thus the
senior partner of a leading Cincinnati law
firm is a Chaucer devotee and owns a
notable library of Chaucerian and early English
literature. The writer's landlord, a
real estate operator, has been a lifelong Petrarch
scholar and confesses that, when as a
younger man he visited the then leading French
Petrarchist of the day, the latter was
impressed almost to tears by the revelation that
his subject was a matter of interest to
anyone in the United States. Another business
executive is a student of Russian
iconography, and yet another an avowed cultivator
of the Greek and Latin classics. This
refreshing departure from the general philis-
tinism of average American business and
professional life finds a visible centre in the
Monday evening gatherings of the
Literary Club, founded shortly after the Civil
War, whose members meet in rooms
befittingly reminiscent of the eighteenth century
and maintain a high standard both of
subject matter and literary expression in their
weekly papers.
"But apart from this agreeable and
unexpected intellectual bypath, the mental
atmosphere of Cincinnati is far from
bracing. This may be due to climate and geo-
graphical location, to the miasmas and
torpors inseparable from life at river level.
Unkinder critics aver, with some
plausibility, that the native stodginess of the basic
German element has permeated the entire
population. Whatever the reason, it is
undeniable that Cincinnatians do not
bring to their controversies any noticeable dis-
play of violent feeling. Thus local
isolationism and anti-British prejudice, apart from
some vehement manifestations towards the
close of the neutrality epoch, have run
in comparatively unruffled grooves and
lacked the viciousness that characterises their
expression in the pages of the Chicago Tribune.
Cincinnati, one is often tempted to
surmise, cares for none of these things.
It is, or would like to be, indifferent to them,
a Laodicea among cities. Apart from the
rising toll of casualties towards the close
of hostilities, it may be seriously
doubted whether the population felt the war's impact
to any sensible degree. There appears to
be little hope of any fundamental alteration
in this attitude of rooted indifference
to external events. For most people, and not
only in the Middle West, the unseen and
the unknown are also the unimaginable.
The atomic bomb and rocket-propulsion
may work a change, but both are in their
infancy and we do not know what defence
may be contrived to meet them. If science,
as is not inconceivable, can repeat the
uniform pattern of past experience and devise
effective counter-measures to these
inventions (and even if it does not), American
isolationism may yet take on a new,
vigorous and dangerous lease of life. Signs of its
re-emergence were becoming abundantly
apparent towards the end of the war period,
even amid the mounting crescendo of
Allied victory. In the Middle Western atmo-
sphere, it is a factor that can never be
completely discounted: endemic, tenacious
and ever potentially resurgent.
"In such an atmosphere, the only
effective defence is, if not attack, at least sur-
prise, and it is undeniable that the
simplest facts of the British case are novel and
peculiar to Mid-Western ears. Thus the
manner and content of the spoken word
284 OHIO
HISTORY
acquire a corresponding importance.
There is, as everywhere throughout the United
States, no lack of invitations from
Rotary clubs, societies and organisations, church,
school and college groups, the ordinary
stock-in-trade of a consul's public speaking
activity. These for many years now have
come to expect a 'good talk' from a British
consular officer as a matter of course;
and however galling it may be to know that
they are getting for nothing what they
pay for on other occasions (and there were
weeks, especially when his appointment
was newly current, when the writer was
obliged to decline, in favour of war
relief and other charitable causes, proffered fees
amounting to anything from 100 to 200
dollars), such groups incontestably offer
a valuable unsolicited forum for getting
the British standpoint across. Manner is as
important as matter, for the impression
left by a speaker outlives recollection of his
remarks, which are all too quickly
forgotten. Sincerity and straight talking are the
most effective approaches, and hostility
can often be disarmed by frank confession.
It is true, and the admission does no
harm, that until recently the average Britisher
was far more ignorant of the United
States than the average American of Britain.
The disclosure can be followed up with
the information that in an effort to fill the
lacuna we are now teaching American
history in our schools (and even importing
American professors to help us do it);
but that although we may be ignorant of
American history, on the fundamental
fact of that history, the Revolution, we are
taught that the Americans were right and
we were wrong; and if that was all the
American history we ever learned, we
should still have mastered its most valuable
lesson. Such an opening can usually
secure an attentive reception for explanations
of the true nature and evolution of the
Commonwealth and Empire. It can be de-
veloped with a plea for reciprocity and
an elimination of the anti-British bias that
has so long luxuriated within the pages
of the average American textbook.
"The writer made it his business to
speak in as many universities and teachers'
training colleges as possible. Higher
educational institutions in the Cincinnati con-
sular district, while not matching the
remarkable number of such institutions in
Northern Ohio, present some distinctive
and noteworthy features. Cincinnati itself
is the seat of the largest municipal
university in the country; Louisville, also a munici-
pal university, possesses in its
president [Einan William Jacobson] an experienced
authority in the field of primary
education, one who believes that American national
prejudices are too costly a luxury in
the modern world, and who is taking practical
steps towards ensuring that the
chauvinistic and tendentious school textbooks of the
past are progressively replaced by works
written for Americans by American scholars
conforming to more enlightened and
objective standards. The University of Ken-
tucky at Lexington boasts a particularly
active agricultural department, which, as is
fitting in a predominantly agricultural
region, maintains a close and fruitful con-
nexion with the practical farming
activity of the State. Berea, a unique institution,
brings higher educational opportunity to
the young mountain population, and com-
bines it with a significant achievement
in the field of handicrafts. It was invariably
possible to ask the president of these
and other colleges to pass one along to the
next. University audiences, which during
the war years have included large numbers
of armed services trainees taking
special courses, afforded a valuable opportunity
for hearing and gauging the opinion of
modern American youth and those who will
soon be teaching the American youth of
to-morrow. The questions put by these
students were often more intelligent and
to the point than those of their elders.
"But with all audiences, it must be
confessed, adolescent or adult, one invariably
found that one could not take too much
for granted. On repeated occasions one
Cincinnati, 1945
285
launched into more advanced topics only
to be brought up short at question time
with the inevitable 'When are you going
to give Australia its freedom?' Or 'Why
does India have to pay taxes to
Britain?' One soon became reconciled to this and
took consolation in the thought that
one's remarks, in addition to their primary in-
formative function, stimulated a very
necessary catharsis. If such beliefs exist, they
had better come out and the bosom be
cleansed of its perilous stuff. It was possible
to hint to teachers that, since nearly
everybody in the United States has been to
school, such beliefs are a challenge to
the teaching profession; that these are dan-
gerous days for illusions or delusions;
and that, since the penalty for being wrong
is apt to be costly, it is far safer to
find out the facts and to stick to them.
"Nevertheless it is necessary to
consider seriously whether these public speaking
duties, to which British consular
officers in the United States are now irrevocably
committed, are worth while. The point
has been keenly argued and every consular
officer who has seen his working time
and leisure cut into by the insistent demands
of the insatiable and unboreable
American public has asked himself the question.
Leaving aside the consideration that
constant refusal of such invitations would
impair a British official's
effectiveness in this country, there is no certain answer.
Such activity necessarily resembles
pouring water into a sieve. If we are silent, our
enemies have it all their own way. On
the other hand the unconverted are difficult
to reach and harder to convince. The
prurient and censorious criticism, to which
the American people are so notoriously
addicted, is undoubtedly a pathological
phenomenon warranting the studious
attention of the social scientist and the psy-
chiatrist. To live in the midst of it as
a stranger becomes with the passage of time
an exhausting experience. The fact must
be faced that the mental and emotional
instability of a large majority of the
American public is chronic. It is the perpetual
necessity of making the medicine of
public relations its daily bread which imposes
so constant a strain on the duties of a
foreign service assignment in the United States
and which, in the writer's opinion,
renders inadvisable the posting there of officers
of junior or intermediate seniority for
too long and uninterrupted periods of service.
"The plain truth is that the
American public, in words once used to the writer
by a college president, is grossly and
dangerously ignorant of foreign affairs. The
removal of such ignorance through
existing educational and publicity channels is a
clear responsibility of the United
States Government, as a matter of hard-headed
self-interest. But notwithstanding the
recent descent of State Department specialists
into the arenas of public meeting and
radio forum, it may well be doubted whether
the United States Government will ever
adequately measure up to the task; and the
American press and radio are, with some
notable exceptions, too irresponsible to
form and adhere to a proper conception
of their function in this important particular.
So to the limited extent that any
corrective can be administered by British officials,
the British taxpayer has to foot the
bill. This statement is made with all due reserve.
Britain stands or falls in foreign
public opinion by her deeds. If these are bad or
unwise, no words will gild them. On the
other hand what is received in return for
publicising a good cause or a sound
course of action is an imponderable, but none
the less important for that and in the
testing time may well prove of incalculable
value. If Mr. Churchill's dream of an
Anglo-American Union ever materialises, the
British Foreign and Information Services
in the United States will have played their
part in securing this consummation and
have earned their footnote in the histories.
"... The roots of anti-British
prejudices have often been analysed. But an oppor-
tunity to study unfamiliar
manifestations at first hand is always illuminating. The
286 OHIO HISTORY
German-American population of Cincinnati
is not pro-Nazi. Its forebears fled Ger-
many to escape Nazidom's earlier and, by
comparison, somewhat less odious pre-
cursors. Its ranks have not been swelled
by recent immigration, there was no Bund
in this region to bid for its sympathies
nor has it possessed any German language
newspaper for many years. Yet like so
many strains which have settled in the
United States, including those from
Britain, the German-American tends to look
back to the land of his origin with a
wrong-headed nostalgia. He pictures Gemut-
lichkeit, beer gardens, music and mountains and, forgetting
conscription, discipline,
brutality, recreates an ideal Germany
that never existed. There are those who claim
that he is really unhappy, although he
does not know it, and ill at ease in the prom-
ised land, whose material blessings are
an insufficient compensation for a lost Eden
of spiritual and aesthetic values, looks
round for a scapegoat, which in the shape
of Britain is readily provided for him
both by American tradition and his own an-
cestral antipathies.
"At the other extreme stands the
Anglophile, perhaps even more dangerous than
the Anglophobe. He too looks back to a
romanticised past, to the England of manor
houses and country lanes and thatched
cottages and Stratford-upon-Avon; although
Stratford is no more representative of
England than is Santa Barbara of the United
States. We should indeed importune
Heaven to save us from such friends. It is in
this respect that organisations like the
English Speaking Union may conceivably
menace the future of Anglo-American
relations. While some branches are aware
of the danger and have endeavoured to
liberalise and extend their membership,
others (and Cincinnati is one of them)
have preferred to remain closed and exclusive
corporations. Yet an English Speaking
Union should conceive its mission as directed
to all whose language is English, irrespective
of origin. Too often the pride of Brit-
ish ancestry paraded by its members is a
pharisaic relief that they are not Bohunks
or Wops. The demographers predict,
however, that in time the Anglo-Saxon ele-
ment of the American population will
decline before the greater fertility of other
stocks. Already we are witnessing
symptoms of the process. A son of Slovenian
parents is now Governor of Ohio [Frank
Lausche] and a son of Italians [Fiorello
LaGuardia] has long been Mayor of New
York. A President of the United States
may one day be named Bogoslavsky or
Castellini. Self-interest has ousted senti-
ment as the only rational basis of
Anglo-American co-operation. The next step is
to concentrate, irrespective of blood
and race, on that community of language and
law and common ideals which Britons and
Americans share, in the comforting re-
flection that when Britain and the
United States are really menaced, the logic of
events forces them together, whether
they like it or not, in defence of the security
of their joint heritage.
"With regard to the work of the
British Information Services, the writer's experi-
ence reinforces the conclusion that,
since the possibility of harnessing individual
speaking talent to official policy has
ceased with the termination of the war, the
most promising scope for the
continuation and development of information activities
offers in the field of education. The
B.I.S. reputation stands high in educational
circles, as within more limited terms of
reference between the two wars did that
of its forerunner, the British Library
of Information. The prejudices and ignorance
of many of our elder American critics
are convictions of too settled and cherished
a stamp to respond to the arts of
enlightenment and persuasion. We must cut our
losses in this quarter and concentrate
on the young. If the B.I.S. can maintain its
standards of quality, teachers and
students will continue to appreciate and request
Cincinnati, 1945
287
its exhibition and printed material, the
placing of which has presented on difficulties
in the Cincinnati consular district
during the war years. It would, however, in the
opinion of many competent observers, be
unwise to concentrate or restrict this
effort in the direction of university
and high school, important as these institutions
are in the American educational scheme.
Rather will it be found profitable to keep
in mind and to cater as efficiently as
opportunity offers to the requirements of the
primary public and parochial schools at
the base of the educational structure, which
bulk largest in the school experience of
the majority of American children and in
which their thinking patterns are still
predominantly formed. There are obvious dif-
ficulties in these quarters, but they
can often be surmounted, and where this is so,
the initiative is well worth the effort.
Visual education is clearly destined to play
an augmented role throughout the
educational system, for now that consumer restric-
tions are lifted, the process, already
begun, of equipping every school with a pro-
jector will continue at a rapid rate.
Here our difficulty will lie in the discovery of
peace-time film subjects comparable in
interest to the best of the war documentaries.
Hollywood has taught American youth
impatience at the absence of action and pace
on the motion picture screen and
reconstruction and social problems are at a decided
disadvantage in this respect compared
with the Battle of Malta. The pictorial re-
sources of British history may be found
worth cultivating in this connection. Finally,
the strongest of pleas must again be
lodged for a sensitive attention to sound, that
continuing stumbling block of British
films in the United States.1l
"No discussion of the projection of
Britain would be complete without mention
of the unspectacular but none the less
highly effective achievement of the B.B.C.
which, working closely with American
radio stations, of which one of the most
co-operative has been Cincinnati's
clear-channel powerful and far-reaching W.L.W.,
has diffused a familiarity with everyday
British life and custom in both urban and
rural homes throughout broad regions of
the Middle West. The success of these
broadcast programmes, which could not
have been approached by any other medium
of communication, is amply substantiated
by their popularity and the correspon-
dence and friendship they have developed
between American listeners and broad-
casters in Britain. By their revelation
of typical British men and women as people
whose daily lives and work and
aspirations are not unrecognisably dissimilar from
those of 100 per cent Americans, they
have done much to remove local delusions
on the subject of British habit and
character.
"The mention of radio recalls
music, and in view of the meagre British participa-
tion in Cincinnati's general development
it is pleasant to be able to record a notable
British contribution in the field of the
arts by Mr. Eugene Goossens, who has for
some dozen years directed and conducted
the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra.
"On the subject of the press, the
student of American institutions cannot fail to
mark and be puzzled by the qualitative
disparity between the newspapers of one
city and another. The balance, informed
criticism and good writing which have
made, for instance, the Courier
Journal of Louisville one of the outstanding news-
papers of the United States are not
matched in Cincinnati, a larger city. The Bing-
ham family have, indeed, brought to the
building-up of the Courier Journal into
a high quality newspaper a large part of
the money and effort, which other pub-
lishers devote to securing advertising
and pecuniary profit. The close associations
11. Consul Tandy was very probably
referring to the difficulty which American audiences
had in understanding unfamiliar English
dialects.
288 OHIO
HISTORY
of the family with Britain have been a
great asset to the British cause, although
there are those who believe that the
paper's management is in danger of overplaying
its hand in this particular. Under the
present regime of Mr. Mark Ethridge, who has
been consistently friendly and helpful
to the work of the consulate in the Louisville
area, its policy displays marked Liberal
characteristics, not only in foreign affairs
where, indeed, it exhibits some of the
typical wrong-headedness of the American
Liberal in these unfamiliar regions, but
also in domestic matters, especially by ad-
vocacy of the south's pleas for removal
of economic discrimination and champion-
ship of fair practices for the coloured
citizen. Here it challenges powerful vested
interests and, enjoying a publishing
monopoly in Louisville, may provoke bitter
opposition in the conflicts for which
opposing forces are now gathering. By com-
parison with the Courier Journal, the
editorial comment of the Cincinnati Enquirer
displays a marked pedestrian quality,
although it has recently improved considerably
since the paper's able and aggressive
foreign editor returned from war service. The
Cincinnati Times-Star, the Taft paper, in spite of some reflections of the
Senator's
stubborn and unimaginative obtuseness,
fails in general to reflect the more repre-
hensible features of mid-western
prejudice, largely owing to the personality of its
publisher, Mr. Hulbert Taft, who
delights in the self-styled appellation of "pro-
British isolationist." Mr. Taft
likes to see Britain taking a strong line. Unlike the
majority of his publishing colleagues he
thoroughly approved of British action in
Greece in the winter of 1944-45, for
which he was at some pains to discover alleged
precedents in the Philippine compaign of
1899. Notwithstanding a nominal isola-
tionism, the Times-Star's comment
on foreign affairs is on the whole sane, balanced
and well-informed, reflecting the able
and conscientious work of the Rhodes scholar
who writes it.
"To speak of religious matters, Dr.
Henry Wise Hobson, the Episcopal Bishop of
Southern Ohio, has taken an active
interest in the American assumption of respon-
sibility for Anglican foreign missions
during the war and paid an official visit to
England on the invitation of the
Archbishop of Canterbury last year. He staunchly
supported the Allied cause before
America's entrance into hostilities and displayed
signal courage in the face of opposition
in doing so. Many think that he is likely
to be the next or next-but-one presiding
Bishop. The Episcopal communion in this
region is not, however, large. A far
more numerous membership attaches to other
Protestant denominations, some of whose
pastors were born in Britain and most
of whom offer a friendly and receptive
welcome to a British representative. The
Catholics of Cincinnati are estimated at
40 per cent of the city's population. Arch-
bishop McNicholas, their leader, a
Dominican presiding over one of the older sees
of the United States, is intellectually
one of the outstanding members of the North
American hierarchy. Neither by tradition
nor inclination is the Catholic Church
in the United States particularly
disposed to friendliness towards Britain, for suffi-
ciently comprehensible historical
reasons.
* *
*
"Cincinnati is a Jewish centre of
some importance; the original home of American
Liberal Judaism; the seat of an influential
Hebrew Theological Seminary, over-
shadowed somewhat in recent years by
rivals on the eastern seaboard, and the resi-
dence of several prominent Jewish
clergymen. Rabbi James Heller, the most out-
standing of these, a zealous and
outspoken Zionist and chairman of the United
Palestine Appeal, toured Palestine
extensively this year. His is likely to be one of
the more importunate voices in the
rising insistence of American Zionist agitation.
Cincinnati, 1945
289
The Jewish community of Cincinnati,
originating chiefly from Eastern Germany
before the setting in of the full flood
of indiscriminate trans-atlantic migration, is on
the whole of a rather higher calibre
than that of other American cities, and it partici-
pates actively and constructively in
civic affairs and in organisations devoted to social
problems, the preservation of the
charter form of municipal Government, of which
Cincinnati was a pioneer exponent, and
also the foreign policy association. This
relative superiority and sense of civic
responsibility does not, however, render the
Jewish element fundamentally any more
acceptable to the remainder of the com-
munity. Here, as elsewhere, the personal
and communal virtues of individual Jews
seem unable to resolve the complications
of Jewry's basic and universal problem.
"There is a Mohammedan place of
worship in Cincinnati, presided over by a
British Indian subject. Since the city
boasts no oriental population of any size, the
composition of the congregation is a
matter of legitimate curiosity and, indeed, of
surprise, consisting, as it does,
largely of negroes. It is not clear by what attraction
these were proselytised from their
traditional attachment to the fervours and devo-
tions of the emotional Christianity,
which is the negro's distinctive contribution to
the American religious scene. A
prominent Punjaubi Moslem visitor, who viewed
the phenomenon with satisfaction, once
told the writer that he considered Islam
a most suitable religion for American
negroes, since its fundamental doctrine of
the equality of men before their Creator
was admirably fitted to sustain and inspire
their pending struggle for civil,
economic and social rights.
"Of the negro problem Cincinnati, a
meeting place of north and south, affords
opportunities for close and intimate
study. Here it must suffice to state that there
has been a large coloured influx from
the south in recent years and that in spite of
inevitable overcrowding and
exploitation, coloured gains have been made. Negroes
have won the right of admission to
municipal housing projects from which their
exclusion was originally intended, and
there is a reasonably healthy community in-
terest in their welfare. At a recent
rally the largest public dinner ever held in the
city, advocating racial tolerance and
fair treatment for the negro, a mixed white
and coloured attendance, which included
many guests of civic, professional and
religious prominence, sat down together
at table. The stresses of the coloured prob-
lem, although by no means dormant, are
less intrusive and vehement than in the
larger industrial centres. Professors of
sociology in the universities are inclined to
take an academic view of the difficulty
and to prophesy its ultimate disappearance
in the assimilation of the two races. To
the question of Wilberforce's critic: 'You say
"My black brother": Would you
like to say "My black brother-in-law"?' The more
tenacious exponents of this theory reply
that, while at the present time relatively
few whites would knowingly marry
coloured blood, miscengenation at lower levels
is constantly taking place and, with the
dilution effected by time, is inevitably des-
tined to extend upward through the
social structure. Such speculations concern a yet
far-distant future. For the present the
observer can but conclude that he confronts
a problem, which seems destined to
develop into the United States' major internal
preoccupation and one for which at this
stage there appears to be no radical or per-
manent solution.
"Normal foreign trading has been at
a standstill during the war years, but Cin-
cinnati has close commercial contacts
with Britain. Several industrial corporations
of consequence, among them the largest
of the machine tool manufacturers, the
Cincinnati Milling Machine Company, the
American Laundry Machinery Com-
pany, and Proctor and Gamble (Ivory
Soap) own United Kingdom subsidiaries.
290 OHIO HISTORY
The area exported substantially to
Britain before the war and the trade-mark Cin-
cinnati stamped on its machine tools has
impressed the city's industrial importance
upon many a worker and visitor in the
war factories of Britain. To look at the other
side of the ledger, it is still too
early to secure a clear picture of the potentialities for
United Kingdom exports. Here, as
throughout the United States, there are demands
for those quality goods, now in such
short supply, for which Americans have always
been ready to pay high prices: shoes,
china, linens, textiles, whiskey. As one depart-
ment store manager said in response to a
trade enquiry: 'What have you got to sell?
When can you deliver it? We'll buy all
we can get.' In such an atmosphere the
continuing failure of consignments to
materialise in any substantial quantity is dis-
tinctly discouraging. There are also
indications of a demand for regional agency
representation, direct buying, and a
trend to break away from the importing suprem-
acy of New York. These should be worth
careful study if, as it claimed, they can
afford possibilities of covering the
growing interior markets of the United States more
intensively and obtaining that
additional 50 per cent of export trade, which one way
or another Britain must secure to live.
"It may be confidently asserted
that the new United States posts came into being
too late. When the British Consulate at
Cincinnati opened, America had been in
the war more than a year. During the
stormy pre-Pearl Harbour days, as in the
years of mounting tension between 1933
and 1939. the British side of the story was
seldom heard in this part of the
country. Intermittent attempts to fill the void were
made by consular officers stationed at a
distance, or a senior official from Washing-
ton or the speakers of the B.I.S. But
contrary voices were more often and more
loudly in evidence. The small local
branch of Bundles for Britain worked under
great difficulties, and in late 1941 saw
its membership and headquarters subjected
to violent abuse and picketing. British
representation lacked a visible symbol. The
chill winds of depression and economy
had swept away most of the subordinate posts
in the United States (of which
Cincinnati was one) in the early thirties. Yet it was
precisely during those years that Hitler
was striding to power and the powder-keg
of world aggression was touched off in
the Far East. Looking back now it is easy
to see that, rather than abolish these
posts, the authorities might profitably have
strengthened them against the impending
storm. During the same decade and well
into the war period, German Consulates
in the United States were continually ex-
panding their establishments and
extending their influence. It was a false economy
which permitted our case to go by
default throughout such crucial years.
"It would therefore in the opinion
of the writer, be a mistake to close the new
United States posts now that they have
been opened. To do so would invite the
inevitable charge that we inaugurated
them when we needed American help and
shut them up when the danger was past.
On the other hand it is appreciated that
finding incumbents may well present
insurmountable difficulties during the next few
years. If career officers are not
available, however, it would be preferable to carry
on with non-career officers rather than
permit what has been built up to lapse. The
years ahead may well find Anglo-American
relations subjected to sharper strains
than any they have yet experienced.
These Middle Western outposts serve not only
for the projection of Britain, but, as
listening posts in a region that, with its increas-
ing wealth and importance, its
substantial industrial and agricultural production and
growing market opportunities, will
justifiably take itself more seriously in the future.
"The public relations posts are
unlikely, even in the years of peace, to provide
"The public relations posts are
unlikely, even in the years of peace, to provide
Cincinnati, 1945
291
a sufficiency of that type of office
work which has hitherto given the consular officer
the rationale of his official existence.
Their opportunities are of another kind. If,
as Mr. Churchill has prophesied, and as
indeed seems inevitable, the affairs of Bri-
tain and the United States are likely to
become mixed up, to march together rather
more in the future than they have done
in the past, it is a matter of vital consequence
that the two peoples should understand
each other as they are. Not only should the
British point of view be presented in
the United States; it is no less important that
the life and opinion of the North
American continent's vast, diverse interior regions
should be studied at close quarters and
correctly interpreted to Washington and
Whitehall. We must never incur the
danger of estrangement from the United States.
For us, as for them, ignorance is a
luxury we can no longer afford; for beyond doubt
in the world of to-morrow its penalties
will be even more swift, certain and catas-
trophic than those of the stern ordeal
we have jointly surmounted after so protracted
a struggle and by so narrow and critical
a margin.
*
* *
"Nor can the full flavour and
diversity of the American scene be savoured except
by unremitting and assiduous travel; by
train, plane, car and, most rewarding of all,
by bus, where the common denominator of
discomfort presents opportunities for get-
ting to know one's fellow travellers far
superior to those afforded by the faster and
more luxurious methods of conveyance. It
is recounted that formerly a British con-
sular officer, attached for several
years to the largest consular post in the United
States, was known to boast that he had
never set foot on the American mainland:
for he worked on Manhattan Island, lived
on Staten Island and took his holidays on
Long Island. Such an attitude,
inconceivable today, is happily unlikely to receive
encouragement in the future. Indeed it
is to be hoped that appointment to one of
the smaller posts in the United States
may come to be sought and regarded as a
privileged opportunity to make a modest
contribution to the extension of that mutual
understanding and respect, so necessary
to continuing co-operation between Britain
and the United States, which is the
essential prerequisite of any broader interna-
tional concord and without which there
is no hopeful prospect for world order or
enduring peace."
edited by
THOMAS E. HACHEY
Cincinnati Through English
Spectacles: A British Diplomat's
Confidential View in 1945
In the months immediately following the
Second World War, British consuls sta-
tioned throughout the United States
forwarded to the London Foreign Office a sub-
stantial number of telegrams, memoranda,
and dispatches regarding the climate of
American opinion toward England. What
Winston Churchill had called "the Grand
Alliance" seemed, in the judgment
of many of these diplomats, to be an increasingly
tenuous liaison.l The post-war world
contained new and often divisive circumstances
in contradistinction to the unity
produced by a common cause in the period of hos-
tilities. Some of the consuls cautioned
against allowing satisfaction with the Allied
victory to obscure the implications and
significance of another reality: the likelihood
that British dependence upon the United
States would become progressively greater
in the years ahead. All seemed to agree
that promoting goodwill with the Americans
should be one of the highest priorities
of His Majesty's Government. Indeed, the
London Foreign Office had undertaken a
comprehensive effort to propagandize
Americans during the period immediately
preceding World War II,2 and had con-
tinued that effort under somewhat
different guises during the larger part of that
conflict.3 The future need
for amicable Anglo-American relations was certainly
apparent to Foreign Office officials in
1945 and they accorded the closest scrutiny
to recommendations by British consuls in
the United States regarding how that end
might best be achieved.4 One
of the most engaging of these communications was a
dispatch which London received on
November 5, 1945 from Arthur H. Tandy, the
British consul at Cincinnati. So
impressed by this dispatch was the Foreign Office
1. These documents, arranged by calendar
years, are among both the Foreign Office general
correspondence files (F.O. 371) and its
consular files (F.O. 115) located at the London Public
Record Office.
2. See Thomas E. Hachey,
"Winning Friends and Influencing Policy: British Strategy to Woo
America in 1937," Wisconsin
Magazine of History, LV (Winter 1971-1972), 120-129.
3. See F. 0. 371/30652-30727;
34086-34091; 38501-38676; 44535-44550 which contain a
substantial number of documents
attesting to this effort between the years 1942 and 1945.
4. In addition to the Foreign Office
minutes contained in volumes like F.O. 371/44615, see
also the Foreign Office private
collections (F.O. 800) and Foreign Office Confidential Print
(F.O. 401-490) for further evidence of
this sentiment.
Mr. Hachey is Associate Professor of
History, Marquette University, Milwaukee, Wisconsin.