Ohio History Journal

JEFFERY C. LIVINGSTON

Between "America First" and

"All-Out" Internationalism: The

Fulbright Resolution and Ohio

Republican John M. Vorys

In the U.S. House of Representatives on June 16, 1943, Congressman

John M. Vorys interrupted a floor debate on domestic programs to present the

Fulbright Resolution. Passed by the House in September 1943, the

Fulbright Resolution was during the Second World War the first official en-

dorsement of permanent U.S. participation in a collective security arrange-

ment. The resolution highlighted growing public support for a successor to

the League of Nations, and thus represented a significant step toward forma-

tion of the United Nations. A Republican from isolationist Ohio, John

Vorys had opposed America's political involvement in Europe in the years

before Pearl Harbor. Now, he stood before the House on his forty-seventh

birthday and publicly reversed course, arguing that the United States should

maintain strong commitments overseas, including Europe, even after the

Second World War ended.

Vorys' action placed him in the forefront of a crucial shift in the foreign

policy attitudes of conservative Republicans. Prior to World War II,

Republican isolationists, often from the midwestern states, suspected foreign

political and military involvement. They contended that overseas entangle-

ment would erode American freedom of action and portended for the United

States higher taxes, deficit spending, an imperial presidency, and garrison

state militarism. World War II and the ensuing cold war, however, led

Jeffery C. Livingston is Assistant Professor of History at California State University, Chico.

He would like to thank Robert Freeman Smith, Nelson L. Dawson, Donald Platt, Kenneth J.

Bindas, Craig Houston, Robert Cohen, and Michael Magliari for reading and commenting on

drafts of this article.

1. For the significance of the Fulbright Resolution, see Robert A. Divine, Second Chance:

The Triumph of Internationalism During World War II (New York, 1967), 141-45; and Philip J.

Briggs, "Congress and Collective Security: The Resolutions of 1943," World Affairs, 132

(March, 1970), 332-44; reprinted in Briggs, Making American Foreign Policy: President-

Congress Relations from the Second World War to Vietnam (Lanham, Md., 1991), 19-38. For

Vorys' remarks, see 16 June 1943, Congressional Record, 77th Cong., 1st sess., 5943-44.

Congressional Record hereafter referred to as CR.

Fulbright Resolution and Vorys                                        119

rightwingers in the GOP to change their tune and back sustained foreign in-

tervention, first to defeat the Axis, then to contain communism. When they

reversed their thinking, Republican conservatives helped to forge a bipartisan

consensus in support of a globalist foreign policy. Though some liberals in

both parties later deserted during the Vietnam War, the consensus endured fun-

damentally intact through the 1980s.²

The recent end of the cold war, however, has removed many of the condi-

tions that turned isolationists like Vorys into globalists during the 1940s and

1950s. Buried for decades, conservative isolationism in the GOP has been

resurrected in the past several years. Led by Patrick Buchanan, candidate for

his party's presidential nomination in 1992, some rightwingers have rebelled

against modern GOP orthodoxy and urged U.S. retrenchment. Their calls for

"America First" echo the campaign against intervention in World War II

mounted by their ideological forebears. It is timely to reexamine why con-

servative Republicans such as John Vorys renounced isolationism in the first

place.³

Leading accounts of that transformation oversimplify and distort it. The

most complete study is Robert A. Divine's impressive and influential Second

Chance. Writing from a Wilsonian perspective, Divine presents American

entry into World War II as a millennial "triumph of internationalism" over

myopic, old-fashioned isolationism. In his portrayal, conservative isolation-

ists suddenly woke up during the early forties, faced reality, and accepted the

international responsibilities commensurate with America's role as a great

power. Richard E. Darilek argues in A Loyal Opposition in Time of War

that pragmatic political calculations were central. To save their party, demor-

alized after years of minority status and discredited by its responses to both

the Depression and foreign war, Republicans adopted internationalism "as a

strategic response to a hazardous situation in American politics." Foreign

Policy and Party Politics, a classic work written by political scientist H.

Bradford Westerfield in the 1950s, offers still another explanation.

Westerfield contends that the need for bipartisan unity in wartime led

Republicans to concur uncritically with Democratic proposals for internation-

2. On the cold war consensus, see Justus D. Doenecke, Not to the Swift: The Old

Isolationists in the Cold War Era (Lewisburg, Pa., 1979); Michael W. Miles, Odyssey of the

American Right (New York, 1980); Michael Vlahos, "The End of America's Postwar Ethos,"

Foreign Affairs, 66 (Summer, 1988), 1091-1107.  Richard A. Melanson argues in

Reconstructing Consensus: American Foreign Policy since the Vietnam War (New York, 1991)

that the consensus collapsed entirely during the Vietnam War.

3. On renewed isolationism, see for example The Nation (24 Sept. 1990), 298; New York

Times, 28 Aug. 1990; Joseph Sobran, "Analyzing the Warmongers," Chico Enterprise-Record

(Chico, Calif.), 4 Sept. 1990; Sidney Blumenthal, "Tomorrow Belongs to Me," The New

Republic (27 Jan. 1992), 24-26; William Greider, "Buchanan Rethinks the American Empire,"

Rolling Stone (6 Feb. 1992), 37-39.

120                                                         OHIO HISTORY

alism, a position that Donald R. McCoy effectively attacks in a superb but

overlooked article.⁴

A close look at John Vorys reveals the need for a more complex analysis.

Divine, Darilek, and Westerfield each stress only one of the many pressures

that operated on Republicans. In Vorys' case, the interaction of diverse con-

siderations-national security, ideology, congressional and House parochial-

ism, and party and electoral politics-motivated his wartime movement to in-

ternationalism. His involvement with the Fulbright Resolution illustrates

how Vorys finessed this web of concerns.

By failing to define precisely the term "internationalism," the three authors

also tend to overstate conservative Republican agreement with schemes for

American foreign involvement proposed by liberals and Democrats. The

meaning of "internationalism" is slippery. Since the outbreak of World War

II the word has been used by scholars and the public in at least two ways.

During the war it often had idealistic overtones. Expressed in phrases such as

Wendell Willkie's "one world" and associated with the ideas of Woodrow

Wilson, internationalism connoted the surrender of a large degree of national

sovereignty to transnational institutions that would establish and maintain

lasting peace. Yet, during and after the war the term also simply meant en-

hanced American responsibility in foreign affairs, usually in pursuit of world

order whether in concert with other nations or alone.⁵

In this article, "internationalism" will be counterpoised to "isolationism."

At a minimum, an "isolationist" opposed involvement in a European military

conflict and resisted participation in military alliances and collective security

organizations. Isolationists sought above all else to preserve America's free

hand. "Internationalists" accepted commitments to military alliances and col-

lective security. They could differ greatly, however, on precisely how much

national sovereignty they were willing to relinquish to an international body

and on just how collective security should be organized.⁶

As will be demonstrated, John Vorys developed a conservative variant of in-

ternationalism. The Ohioan concluded early in World War II that American

4. Divine, Second Chance; Richard E. Darilek, A Loyal Opposition in Time of War: The

Republican Party and the Politics of Foreign Policy from Pearl Harbor to Yalta (Westport,

Conn., 1976), esp. 182-85; H. Bradford Westerfield, Foreign Policy and Party Politics: Pearl

Harbor to Korea (New Haven, 1955), 135, 138-39, passim; Donald R. McCoy, "Republican

Opposition During Wartime," Mid-America: An Historical Review, 49 (July, 1967), 174-89.

5. For example, in Second Chance, Divine often seems to mean "Wilsonian" when he

employs "internationalism." But he also discusses a "spectrum" of internationalism that

includes Wilsonians, "idealists," and "realists." See Second Chance, 22, 62, 135, 176, 183. A

useful discussion of the term's definition can be found in Warren F. Kuehl, "Internationalism,"

in Alexander DeConde, ed., The Encyclopedia of American Foreign Policy: Studies of the

Principal Movements and Ideas (New York, 1978), 443-54.

6. See Kuehl, "Internationalism," and Justus D. Doenecke, Anti-Intervention: A

Bibliographical Introduction to Isolationism and Pacificism from World War I to the Early Cold

War (New York, 1987), xv.

122                                                     OHIO HISTORY

ator. In 1929 he was named the first director of the Ohio Bureau of

Aeronautics, a position he held for two years.⁷

Opposed to the New Deal early on, Vorys bid unsuccessfully for a nomina-

tion to the U.S. Senate in 1934. Turning his attention to the U.S. House of

Representatives, he lost in the 1936 primary before election to Congress in

1938 from Ohio's twelfth congressional district, which included Columbus

and environs. He immediately obtained a seat on the House Committee on

Foreign Affairs, which he held for the rest of his political career. A stocky

workaholic who possessed high intelligence and enormous physical and men-

tal energy, Vorys' reputation rose quickly. Early in 1941 House Majority

Leader John W. McCormack from Massachusetts called the Ohioan "one of

the two recognized leaders" of House Republicans [the other was New York's

Hamilton Fish] "in determining the policy ... on foreign affairs." Not long

afterward a veteran reporter on Capitol Hill observed that Vorys' reputation

for hard work and careful preparation made him one of "²⁰ members of the

House who [could] swing votes one way or another." By the time he left

Congress in 1958 Vorys was hailed as "the intellectual leader" of Republicans

in the House on international issues.⁸

Throughout his career, Vorys held to a conservative nationalist conception

of American foreign policy interests. As a nationalist he sought to maximize

America's free hand. A thoroughgoing conservative, he prized global stabil-

ity and feared revolutionary change, especially if associated with communism.

Instability frightened Vorys because it invited war, which could undermine

American unilateralism. The First World War demonstrated to him that war

also could subvert the American way of life by increasing executive power

and necessitating economic regimentation and heavy government expendi-

tures. At the same time, Vorys recognized the inevitability of change in the

international system. An attorney by training, he hoped to manage change

within a framework of international law.

In the twenties and early thirties Vorys opposed Wilsonian-style interna-

tionalism. American membership in the League of Nations, he believed,

would unnecessarily compromise national sovereignty and entangle the United

States in European quarrels. Vorys argued that it would be foolish "to plunge

into the maelstrom of western Europe on equal terms with the most backward

7. For Vorys' early years, see Jeffery C. Livingston, "Ohio Congressman John M. Vorys: A

Republican Conservative Nationalist and American Foreign Policy" (Ph. D. dissertation,

University of Toledo, 1989), Chapter One.

8. For McCormack, see 13 Feb. 1941, CR, 77th Cong., 1st sess., 991-92. For the reporter's

comments, see Richard [Thornburg] to "Chuck," no date [early World War II], 1962 and 1963

folder, Box 89, The Papers of John M. Vorys, Ohio Historical Society, Columbus, Ohio. The

Papers of John M. Vorys hereafter referred to as JMV, with appropriate folder name and box

number indicated. For "intellectual leader," see William Benton, "The Big Dilemma:

Conscience or Vote?" New York Times Magazine (26 April 1959), 12, 83-84. See also Mark

Sullivan's comments in Washington Post, 6 Feb. 1941, and Westerfield, Foreign Policy, 103.

Fulbright Resolution and Vorys                                     123

of these decadent nations." Moreover, in Vorys' eyes the League lacked an

explicit commitment to adhere to principles of international law, so it would

simply enforce the status quo as defined by the great powers. Vorys thought

instead that the Republican-sponsored treaties signed at the Washington Naval

Conference, which defused tensions in the Pacific and East Asia, the Kellogg-

Briand Pact, which outlawed war, and American adherence to the World Court

would combine to provide a solid legal framework for containing evolutionary

change.⁹

In the 1930s three "gangster" nations-Japan, Italy, and Germany-refused

to operate by international law and thereby made it irrelevant. Convinced that

a European war was in the making, and certain as well that Franklin D.

Roosevelt and the New Dealers would exploit American involvement in war

to aggrandize presidential power, Vorys urged disengagement from Old World

affairs before it was too late. As a rookie congressman, in June 1939 he

helped spearhead the isolationist fight in the House by guiding to passage the

"Vorys Amendment." The amendment temporarily blocked the efforts of

President Roosevelt to secure repeal of a law which stipulated an embargo of

arms for any nation at war. Congress eventually eliminated the embargo in

November 1939, but Vorys continued, with the solid support of his con-

stituents, to battle subsequent policies that inched the United States toward

war.¹⁰

Official U.S. entry into World War II forced Vorys to reexamine isolation-

ism. America's inability to stay uninvolved demonstrated to him that nonin-

tervention was outmoded, because the United States could not remain at peace

while Europe was at war. ll Vorys concluded that to avoid future wars the

United States had to take the lead in fashioning a new, stable world order. By

1943 he concurred with the sentiment that a global organization assembled

roughly along the lines of the League of Nations would be a central pillar in

the postwar reconstruction process.

Membership in this international organization could take many forms and

could come about in many ways, however. Just because he now appeared

wrong about nonentanglement, Vorys was not about to let Roosevelt and lib-

eral Democrats monopolize American foreign policy making. Otherwise, he

9. Vorys to Alonzo Tuttle, 9 Nov. 1921, Arms Conference-1922 folder, and "Rough

Notes," n.d., Miscellaneous Speeches and Papers folder, both in Box 99, JMV; typed

mimeograph, n.d., Campaign Literature folder, Box 91, JMV; notes for talk on Washington

Conference, n.d., Misc. 22-27 folder, Box 95, JMV; Vorys to Simeon D. Fess, 5 Jan. 1929, 1929

Personal Correspondence folder, Box 77, JMV.

10. On the Vorys Amendment, see David L. Porter, "Ohio Representative John M. Vorys

and the Arms Embargo in 1939," Ohio History, 83 (Spring, 1974), 103-13; and Livingston,

"Ohio Congressman John M. Vorys," 54-71. Vorys' fight against U.S. intervention in World

War II can be followed in Livingston, Chapter 2.

11. New York Times, 1 Oct. 1941. As the date indicates, Vorys' change in thinking actually

began on the eve of official American military intervention.

124                                                    OHIO HISTORY

feared, the New Dealers would dole out American sovereignty and resources in

pursuit of an idealistic "One World" or superstate. Vorys developed a version

of internationalism that was a logical extension of his conservative national-

ist core. He insisted that the United States give up only enough sovereignty

to make an international organization workable, and he demanded that such a

body not undermine American constitutional safeguards by circumventing

congressional prerogatives.

The wartime transition of Vorys involved more than a reassessment of U.S.

foreign policy. Serious political hurdles challenged the Ohioan. After Pearl

Harbor isolationism appeared to many Americans as short-sighted at best and

treasonous at worst. Democrats were sure to pounce on Vorys' national repu-

tation as a partisan, isolationist leader and a spokesman for the America First

Committee, the national organization that in 1940-41 led the fight against in-

tervention in the Second World War. Adopting an internationalist stance took

care of this, at least partly. Yet if Vorys repudiated isolationism too force-

fully, he ran the risk of looking opportunistic or of alienating die-hard isola-

tionists back home in Columbus and state GOP leaders, such as Senator

Robert A. Taft and Governor John W. Bricker, who remained wary of interna-

tionalism. It was all well and good to insist on the careful monitoring by

Republicans and by Congress of FDR's postwar planning, but there were

tremendous pressures in wartime for the GOP, Democrats, the White House,

and Capitol Hill to close ranks. Vorys had to walk a fine line. He managed

by adopting a stance of loyal opposition that allowed him on the one hand to

promote national unity, and on the other gave him the leeway to carve out his

own positions on policy specifics.l2

Once the United States entered World War II most serious thinkers, includ-

ing those identified as isolationists, agreed that the country henceforth would

be far more active in international affairs. There was sharp controversy over

exactly how this should take form. At one end of the spectrum idealists such

as Vice President Henry A. Wallace and Republican presidential contender

Wendell Willkie offered vague, almost mystical programs for world federa-

tion. At the other end "realists" such as Walter Lippmann and Herbert

Hoover emphasized great power domination and spheres of influence. In be-

tween, Wilsonian Democrats such as Secretary of State Cordell Hull proposed

a new League of Nations to enforce a liberal-capitalist world order and politi-

cal self-determination. Some conservative Republicans, Senator Robert Taft

for example, accepted American participation in a very weak world organiza-

12. For the wartime political problems that Vorys and fellow Republicans grappled with, see

Darilek, Loyal Opposition, esp. 21-47; McCoy, "Republican Opposition During Wartime";

Thomas Philipose, "The 'Loyal Opposition': Republican Leaders and Foreign Policy, 1943-

1946" (Ph. D. dissertation, University of Denver, 1972); Westerfield, Foreign Policy, 139-45;

press release, 29 Jan. 1942, Statements 1942 folder, Box 85, JMV; radio campaign address, 26

Oct. 1942, Radio and TV Talks-Campaign 1942 folder, Box 96, JMV.

Fulbright Resolution and Vorys                                     125

tion, but placed more faith in international law and a world court. Others,

like Vorys and Senator Arthur Vandenberg of Michigan, thought international

law important but were open to American membership in new multilateral

political and economic arrangements. They sought to preserve national

sovereignty and constitutional procedures, and insisted on White House con-

sultation with Congress and the GOP in any postwar planning.13

The contemporary perception was that, in the interests of creating a strong

international organization, the Democrats would relinquish more national

sovereignty than would Republicans. Wendell Willkie was the most idealis-

tic of the major Republican leaders, and he was a former Democrat who by

1942 exercised minimal influence in conservative, Midwestern party circles.

Not clear at the time was the inconsistency within the Roosevelt administra-

tion. Henry Wallace's "Century of the Common Man," which represented a

kind of global New Deal, and the calls for a world police force by

Undersecretary of State Sumner Welles went beyond anything Cordell Hull

envisioned. Roosevelt himself was more of a power politics diplomatist than

was generally realized. FDR hoped to delay specific planning for as long as

possible, and he tried to keep it in his own hands. The absence of strong

presidential leadership allowed Vorys and other Republican conservatives to

exercise great influence in defining America's overseas responsibilities in the

postwar era.

Until 1943, Vorys improvised. The day after Pearl Harbor, he declared

vaguely that American entry into the war thrust the nation into a position of

permanent global leadership. When the Republican National Committee met

in Chicago in April 1942 to discuss resolutions concerning conduct of the

war and peace planning, Vorys urged an innocuous statement pledging GOP

commitment to the war effort. He warned that to go beyond that might en-

danger American unity. Two months later Vorys called for a meeting of the

Inter-Parliamentary Union. This was an unofficial, hands-across-the-Atlantic

association that since the late nineteenth century had promoted contact be-

tween members of national legislatures in Western Europe and North

America. Vorys felt that a meeting of Allied members of the Union would

facilitate discussion between democratically elected representatives on "basic

war aims and peace aims." He cautioned that, without popular support,

postwar planning was useless.¹⁴

13. Both this paragraph and the following one draw from Divine, Second Chance, 47-68,

84-85, 103-05, 119-27; Thomas M. Campbell, Masquerade Peace: America's UN Policy,

1944-1945 (Tallahassee, 1973), 1-4; Robert Dallek, Franklin D. Roosevelt and American

Foreign Policy, 1932-1945 (New York, 1979), 419-20, 536-37; James T. Patterson, Mr.

Republican: A Biography of Robert A. Taft (Boston, 1972), 285-98.

14. 8 Dec. 1941, CR, 78th Cong., 1st sess., 9352-53; copy of Vorys telegram to Joseph

Martin, 20 Apr. 1942, Statements 1942 folder, Box 85, JMV; 25 June 1942, CR, 78th Cong., 2d

sess., A2423. For information on the Inter-Parliamentary Union, see Michael A. Lutzker,

"Richard Bartholdt," in Biographical Dictionary of Internationalists, Warren F. Kuehl, ed.

126                                                     OHIO HISTORY

The congressional election campaign of 1942 pressured Vorys to clarify his

position. The New Republic devoted an entire issue in May 1942 to expos-

ing congressional isolationists. The journal did not single out the Ohioan

but included the Vorys amendment of 1939 in a list of twenty bills used to

gauge performance on Capitol Hill. In a letter to the periodical published on

June 29, internationalist Clarence Streit, who in 1939 authored a blueprint for

an Atlantic federation in the widely-read Union Now, defended Vorys. Streit

had been impressed with Vorys when they publicly debated the intervention

issue in 1941. Now he praised Vorys' "exceptionally thoughtful and studious

attitude toward the world problem." No other congressman, Streit continued,

was "now giving more earnest, active and constructive thought to the prob-

lem of organizing the world for peace than Mr. Vorys." The New Republic

would have none of Streit's defense and damned him as "politically naive in

the extreme." The magazine ripped Vorys for voting wrong on nineteen of

the twenty items it utilized to measure records.¹⁵

The salvo of The New Republic infuriated Vorys. His office put together a

detailed, ten-page response that stressed the magazine's leftist leanings while

portraying Vorys as a responsible, mainstream conservative. The fallout

from The New Republic affair proved manageable, given the journal's modest

circulation and liberal, highbrow audience. Much more damaging was an arti-

cle published in August in Life, a mass-circulation magazine. Roger

Butterfield, Life's national affairs editor, accused Vorys of continuing to play

politics with isolationism and urged voters in Columbus to throw him out of

office.

The article was a personal as well as political blow to Vorys. Ironically,

he was an old friend of Life publisher Henry R. Luce, a fellow Yalie, and had

been retained by Time, Inc. as an attorney in the late 1920s. After publica-

tion of the article, which he had not seen in advance, Luce wrote Vorys an

apologetic letter. In a Life editorial published in October, Luce tried to make

amends and characterized Vorys as an "able Congressman" who was open to

"international solutions, providing they are real enough to work." Vorys ac-

cepted the apology and welcomed Luce's editorial. Nonetheless, he admitted

that the Butterfield article caused "difficulties." The article, combined with

the tactics of his Democratic opponent, Arthur P. Lamneck, made the election

"a referendum" on Vorys' prewar isolationism.¹⁶

(Westport, Conn., 1983), 55-56; "Financial Report of Interparliamentary Union Conference,"

14 Nov. 1953, IPU folder, Box 24, JMV; scattered information in Box 71, JMV.

15. The New Republic (18 May 1942), 683-711, and (29 June 1942), 894-95.

16. "Synopsis of Record," New Republic 1942 folder, Box 9, JMV; Roger Butterfield, "Is It

True What They Say About Congress?" Life (17 Aug. 1942), 76-87; "Life on the Newsfronts

of the World," Life (19 Oct. 1942), 36; Henry R. Luce to Vorys, 23 Sept. 1942, Vorys to Luce,

25 Sept. 1942, Luce to Vorys, 7 Oct. 1942, Vorys to Luce, 3 Nov. 1942, all in Correspondence

Relating to John M. Vorys, Time Inc. Archives, New York, New York.

Fulbright Resolution and Vorys                                  127

On the campaign stump Vorys conceded that he "may have made mistakes"

in the past. He did not apologize for his record of anti-interventionism, but

instead stressed that before the war he had supported a defense buildup and had

called for an embargo of Japan. He emphasized, still in very general terms,

that the United States should assume an active international role after the war.

Drawing on traditional themes of American mission to bolster campaign

rhetoric, Vorys identified for the United States "a duty and a destiny in a new

world order that cannot be denied." He assured Columbus audiences that with

its moral, economic, and military power, the nation would lead the world to

lasting peace. Even here, however, when on the defensive, Vorys' conserva-

tive distrust of Roosevelt showed through. He called for clarification of

American "peace aims ... concurrently by Congress and the President," not

by the administration alone.¹⁷

Vorys won the election by a wide margin, but still had reason for discom-

fort. The 1942 campaign was one of only two times in his congressional ca-

reer that he faced primary opposition, which indicates that some local

Republicans were unhappy with his politics. He had already defeated

Democrat Arthur Lamneck in 1938 and 1940. Though Vorys' victory in

1940 was a squeaker, easy wins in 1938 and 1942 suggest that Lamneck was

not a consistently strong candidate. A more able opponent in 1942 might

have presented Vorys with more problems. Across the country only five of

115 congressmen with prewar isolationist records suffered defeat. Yet opinion

polls showed that almost three-quarters of Republican voters thought that the

United States should join an international organization after the war.¹⁸ If the

election was indeed a referendum on the isolationism of Vorys, as he believed,

no clear verdict emerged. Nevertheless, he concluded from the campaign that

he had to reshape his image and record to protect his political future.

Across the country, public pressure mounted throughout late 1942 and early

1943 in favor of the United States joining a permanent international peace-

keeping body. In response, congressional Republicans and Democrats intro-

duced a number of resolutions calling for postwar planning. Vorys repeated

his call for a meeting of the Inter-Parliamentary Union. He also kept in

touch with ex-president Herbert Hoover, who co-authored with Hugh Gibson

in 1942 an influential book entitled The Problems of Lasting Peace. The two

accepted expanded overseas commitments, but also stressed a world order

based on retention of national sovereignty. This theme resonated with Vorys,

and he urged Hoover to continue public discussion of the issue. Since

17. "Life on the Newsfronts of the World," Life (16 Nov. 1942), 40; radio campaign ad-

dress, 5 Oct. 1942, radio campaign address, 26 Oct. 1942, texts for both in Radio and TV

Talks-Campaign 1942 folder, Box 96, JMV. See also campaign pamphlets, Campaign

Literature 1942 folder, Box 96, JMV.

18. Divine, Second Chance, 70-74. Vorys won by 16,000 votes out of the 96,000 cast. See

"John M. Vorys in Politics," Bio Material folder, Box 87, JMV.

128                                                        OHIO HISTORY

Hoover was highly respected by the conservative wing of the GOP, Vorys as-

sured him that he could help "keep Republicans from becoming too crystal-

lized in an isolationist frame of mind." At Hoover's request, Vorys set up a

meeting in early Spring 1943 between the "Chief' and House Republicans to

discuss postwar plans. 19

This flurry of activity caught the Roosevelt administration by surprise. At

the request of the White House, Democrat Tom Connally of Texas, chair of

the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, delayed all consideration of postwar

schemes. Although within Congress the Senate traditionally had dibs on for-

eign affairs, House members grew impatient. Recognizing the public clamor

for a congressional endorsement of an international organization, the House

seized a rare chance to jump out in front on a foreign policy issue.

In June 1943 the House Foreign Affairs Committee met to consider a

number of resolutions on postwar planning that had been introduced in recent

months. The most prominent were measures drafted by two Democrats on

the committee, J. William Fulbright of Arkansas and West Virginia's John

Kee. Thirty-eight years old, Fulbright was a former law professor, ex-

president of the University of Arkansas, and a freshman congressman. He

proposed American participation in "the creation of appropriate international

machinery with power adequate to prevent future aggression to maintain

lasting peace." Kee, a seasoned representative nearing seventy, included in his

lengthier resolution specific suggestions for a collective security system.²⁰

For several months previous, Fulbright had held weekly bipartisan meet-

ings in his office to discuss world organization. An occasional opponent of

Fulbright on the paddleball courts in the Capitol Hill gymnasium, Vorys had

been the only senior congressman to participate in what were otherwise con-

claves of first-term representatives. Now he played a prominent role during

the committee hearings, promoting Fulbright's resolution as "the easiest one"

to agree on. He urged his colleagues to report the proposal out quickly before

the summer recess, with a unanimous recommendation for House adoption.

A unanimous vote, he argued, would help prevent a partisan backlash on the

19. Divine, Second Chance, 75-97; Gary Dean Best, Herbert Hoover: The Postpresidential

Years, 1933-1964 (Stanford, 1984), 230; 23 Mar. 1943, CR, 78th Cong., 1st sess., A1383;

George H. Gallup, The Gallup Poll: Public Opinion, 1935-1971: Volume I, 1935-1948 (New

York, 1972), 340, 361, 377, 383. For Vorys-Hoover correspondence, see Box 544, Herbert

Hoover Papers, Post-Presidential Individual Files, Herbert Hoover Presidential Library, West

Branch, Iowa.

20. An interesting contemporary sketch of Fulbright can be found in Max Hall, "J. William

Fulbright: Hell-bent on His Objective," in J.T. Salter, ed., Public Men In and Out of Office

(Chapel Hill, 1946), 181-95. On Kee, see Biographical Directory of the American Congress,

1774-1971 (Washington, D.C., 1971), 1215. The texts of the resolutions by Kee and Fulbright

can be found in House Committee on International Relations, Selected Executive Session

Hearings of the Committee, 1943-1950, Volume 1: Problems of World War II and Its Aftermath,

Part 1 (Historical Series) (Washington, D.C., 1976), 273-74.

130                                                  OHIO HISTORY

draft. At Vorys' suggestion, the committee deleted Fulbright's reference to

prevention of future aggression so as to avoid two dangers: (1) the implica-

tion of an international police force, an idea that isolationists such as Senator

Robert Taft strenuously objected to; and (2) the notion that the United States

would guarantee the status quo, which might be construed by Anglophobes

like Robert C. McCormick, publisher of the Chicago Tribune, as a guarantee

of the British Empire.²²

On June 15, 1943, a unanimous House Foreign Affairs Committee reported

favorably a resolution calling for American participation in "the creation of

appropriate international machinery with power adequate to establish and

maintain a just and lasting peace." The following day Vorys presented the

resolution on the House floor. The symbolism of a staunch, prewar isola-

tionist making the first endorsement of the resolution was obvious. Vorys

stressed that the proposal was a product of both committee Democrats and

Republicans. It was neither "a pious generality" nor "a blueprint of a super-

government," but "a statement of congressional preference in postwar poli-

cies." Though vague, it made clear that "we prefer post-war participation-

not post-war isolation." Knowing that many Republicans doubted that

Roosevelt would consult Congress, Vorys reassured them that the resolution

marked a significant step toward congressional foreign policy making.²³

Immediate reaction by House Republicans demonstrated Vorys' wisdom in

insisting on vague language. A few isolationists, such as Ohio's Frederick

C. Smith, attacked the proposal as a surrender of American sovereignty. But

for the most part, comments were favorable but innocuous. Representative

Frances Bolton of Ohio maintained that the resolution "merely clarifies a be-

ginning." New York's Hamilton Fish, an important isolationist, believed

that the resolution committed Congress "only to the principle of favoring a

just and lasting peace." Edith Nourse Rogers of Massachusetts insisted that

"absolutely nothing . . . will be binding on us."²⁴

To allow time for reducing isolationist opposition, House leaders delayed a

vote on the Fulbright Resolution until fall.²⁵ During the summer con-

stituents generally praised Vorys for his support of the measure. One urged

Vorys to continue searching for middle ground between ultranational isola-

tionists, like Tribune publisher Robert McCormick, and "all-out" internation-

alists such as Wendell Willkie. Party welfare demanded that the GOP find

this golden mean. Vorys agreed, adding in a verbal poke at Roosevelt that

"open democratic arrangements" were necessary, as opposed to the "present

22. Committee on International Relations, Executive Session, 1, 48-50, 52-53, 63-64.

23. New York Times, 16, 17 June 1943; 16 June 1943, CR, 78th Cong., 1st sess., 5943-44.

24. 16 June 1943, CR, 77th Cong., 1st sess., 5944; New York Times, 17 June 1943.

25. Divine, Second Chance, 112.

Fulbright Resolution and Vorys                                     131

secret and uncertain diplomatic contacts" with American allies. "Our mild lit-

tle resolution" was part of this process.²⁶

Still, Vorys faced static in his home district, for isolationism had not van-

ished in Columbus. One constituent accused Vorys of "being taken in" by

"eastern seaboard Republicans." He warned that, if the GOP was not careful,

it could "write its own death warrant." Vorys countered that the United States

always had, and would continue to, "participate in international affairs."

There had always been international machinery; he hoped to insure that after

the war it squared with American interests. Vorys argued that, for the sake of

party survival, the GOP could not concede the initiative on foreign affairs to

Franklin Roosevelt. To maintain credibility, Republicans had to offer alter-

natives. Merely to naysay would guarantee the Democrats a victory in the

1944 elections.²⁷

Support for the Fulbright Resolution soared by September. A national

poll taken in mid-summer indicated that 78 percent of the American people

wanted their congressmen to vote for the resolution. Another survey found

that 81 percent of the public favored the United States joining "a union of na-

tions." The Midwest was but slightly behind the rest of the country in these

polls. At a Republican Party conference in Michigan in mid-September, the

GOP issued the Mackinac Declaration. Carefully worded, the statement called

for "responsible participation by the United States in post-war cooperative or-

ganization among sovereign nations to prevent military aggression and to at-

tain permanent peace with organized justice in a free world." Without naming

the Fulbright Resolution, the Declaration added to the momentum favoring

its passage.²⁸

Fears remained that hardliners in Republican conservative ranks would try

to sabotage the resolution. For example, Daniel Reed of New York, a vocal

and unrepentant isolationist, dubbed the resolution "a wild and reckless plunge

in the dark." Hoping to reduce opposition as much as possible, in mid-

September the Foreign Affairs Committee amended the measure. The new

draft read that Congress favored participation in an international organization

through American constitutional processes.²⁹ House debate on the proposal

then began on September 20.

To underscore the bipartisan backing of the Fulbright Resolution, Vorys

and Democrat Sol Bloom of New York, chair of the Committee on Foreign

Affairs, made the opening speeches. The thrust of Vorys' remarks was two-

26. Francis J. Wright to Vorys, 18 June 1943, Vorys to Wright, 23 June 1943, Fulbright

Resolution folder, Box 79, JMV. See this folder and Peace Plans folder, Box 11, JMV, for

other favorable correspondence.

27. Harold A. Stacy to Vorys, 17 June 1943, Vorys to Stacy, 21 June 1943, Fulbright

Resolution folder, Box 79, JMV.

28. Gallup Poll, 1, 392, 409-10; Divine, Second Chance, 134, 141; Darilek, Loyal

Opposition, 107-15.

29. New York Times, 15, 21 Sept. 1943; Darilek, Loyal Opposition, 119-20.

132                                                          OHIO HISTORY

fold. Once again, he contended that the resolution demonstrated the firm in-

tention of Congress to participate in subsequent postwar planning. The other

issue that Vorys addressed was national sovereignty. He identified the choice

of entering war as "the most important aspect of sovereignty." Yet, he

pointed out, in the twentieth century the United States had twice been pulled

into wars unwillingly. An effective international organization that main-

tained peace could restore that choice.³⁰

World War II convinced Vorys that isolation was unworkable. As he saw

it, either the United States tried to shape foreign events, or it would be con-

trolled by them. The president and Congress had to work together to build a

new global body that, with full American involvement, would prevent World

War III. Paradoxically, though appearing to be a surrender of sovereignty,

membership in an international organization would actually retrieve it, for

collective security would ensure stability and peace. Vorys wanted the United

States to move out in front in forming a global body, because he felt there

was no sense in sitting by "and getting dragged into something we did not

help fix up." Vorys, then, cast off isolation but not his fundamental conser-

vative nationalism. He still sought to protect America's free hand. He main-

tained in addition that, under a system of global law and order enforced by an

international association, individual Americans would have more freedom be-

cause they would escape military conscription and other wartime restric-

tions.³¹

The following day, September 21, the House passed the Fulbright

Resolution, 360-29. Republican isolationists of Ohio who voted for the

measure included Vorys, George Bender, and Frances Bolton. Of the opposi-

tion votes, twenty-six were Republican; eighteen of these were from Ohio,

Illinois, and Michigan. Six Ohio representatives, all Republican, voted

against the bill,³² which suggests that isolationism was not completely dead

in the Buckeye State.

30. 20 Sept. 1943, CR, 78th Cong., 1st sess., 7657-59.

31. House Committee on Foreign Affairs, Extension of the Lend-Lease Act: Hearings on

H.R. 1501, 78th Cong., 1st sess., 1943 (Washington, D.C., 1943), 225, 238-44; 20 Sept. 1943,

CR, 78th Cong., 1st sess., 7657; 18 Apr. 1944, CR, 78th Cong., 2d sess., 3538: 10 May 1944, CR,

78th Cong., 2d sess., 4287-88; 2 June 1944, CR, 78th Cong., 2d sess., 5223; 13 Mar. 1945, CR,

79th Cong., 1st sess., 2122; 11 Sept. 1945, CR, 79th Cong., 1st sess., 8508; press release, 30

Mar. 1944, and radio broadcast, 6 Nov. 1944, both in Correspondence Concerning John M.

Vorys, Time Inc. Archives; Vorys to Herbert Hoover, 17 Mar. 1943, Box 544, Hoover Papers,

Post-Presidential Individual Files; "Opening Statement, 16 Oct. 1943," Statements 1943 folder,

Box 85, JMV; League of Women Voters questionnaire, Questionnaire folder, Box 9, JMV;

Vorys to Franklyn Gerard, 9 June 1945, Bretton Woods folder, Box 13, JMV.

32. 21 Sept. 1943, CR, 78th Cong., 1st sess., 7728-29; New York Times, 22 Sept. 1943;

Newsweek (4 Oct. 1943), 43-44. Ohio representatives who voted against were Henderson H.

Carson (Canton), Cliff Clevenger (Bryan), Walter E. Brehm (Logan), Robert F. Jones (Lima),

Ed Rowe (Akron), and Frederick Smith (Marion).

Fulbright Resolution and Vorys                                     133

Jealous of its turf, the Senate ignored the Fulbright Resolution and in

November 1943 passed its own measure, authored by Tom Connally.

Nevertheless, the Fulbright Resolution had captured and contributed to the ris-

ing tide of support for permanent foreign involvement by the United States.

Republicans and Democrats had cooperated throughout, setting the pattern for

subsequent bipartisanship. When writing his resolution, Connally consulted

with Senator Arthur Vandenberg. By mutual agreement, FDR and his

Republican opponent, Thomas E. Dewey, dropped the question of interna-

tional organization as a campaign issue in the 1944 presidential race.

Vandenberg and John Foster Dulles, the in-house specialist on foreign policy

for the GOP, served on the U.S. delegation to the United Nations Conference

at San Francisco in 1945.³³

The House of Representatives had taken the lead in this process. Vorys

remarked that for "the first time in modern history . . . the House . . . at-

tempted to initiate a statement of plans as to .. . foreign policy." Charles

Eaton of New Jersey, the senior Republican on the Foreign Affairs

Committee, crowed that the Fulbright Resolution elevated the House "to a

first-rank place in the affairs of this republic." Though Eaton vastly inflated

the importance of the lower body, the House had demonstrated that it could

play a role in foreign policy making. Vorys stood at the center of these cru-

cial developments.³⁴

In October Vorys discussed postwar planning with Democratic

Representative Albert Gore of Tennessee on "America's Town Meeting of the

Air," a radio program broadcast nationwide. Vorys' comments summarized

just how multifaceted his support for the Fulbright Resolution was. Coming

as close as he ever would to admitting that he had erred in supporting isola-

tionism, he conceded that in the past the nation "may have" been too self-ab-

sorbed.  But no longer.    The Fulbright Resolution was a bipartisan

"statement of the objective [the United States] must achieve if [it] would win

the peace this time." Plans for this peace could not wait if international law

and order was to be reestablished soon after the war. But any plan had to

serve U.S. interests, "must preserve [America's] national sovereignty, its sol-

vency and security." Vorys also warned the president not to bypass Congress.

Throughout the remainder of the war, he sounded the same themes. Given his

future campaign success, and judging from constituent mail, most Columbus

residents at least acquiesced to Vorys' brand of internationalism.³⁵

33. Dallek, Franklin D. Roosevelt, 483-84; Darilek, Loyal Opposition, 121-22, 162-72, 175-

76; Robert A. Divine, Foreign Policy in U.S. Presidential Elections, 1940-1948 (New York,

1974), 122-25, 147-64.

34. Memo on Fulbright Resolution, 15 Sept. 1943, Fulbright Resolution folder, Box 79, JMV;

New York Times, 22 Sept. 1943.

35. Radio address, 16 Oct. 1943, Statements 1943 folder, Box 85, JMV. Vorys won the

1944 election by 15,000 votes. That was a smaller winning margin than in 1942, but he did not

face primary opposition in 1944. See "Vorys in Politics," JMV. Moreover, he continued to

134                                                      OHIO HISTORY

Vorys' role in the legislative history of the Fulbright Resolution demon-

strates that the wartime evolution of conservative Republicans from isolation-

ism to internationalism was more complicated than scholars have seen.

Vorys' backing of the Fulbright Resolution was more than a "triumph" over

atavistic isolationism. His action was not merely a calculated strategy to

save the GOP and his own political career. Vorys did not, in the interests of

wartime unity, refrain from criticism of administration policy. Instead, the

interplay of diverse foreign policy and domestic considerations accounted for

Vorys' support of the resolution. He accommodated himself to the changed

domestic political climate. As a partisan Republican congressman he strove

to insure a meaningful role for his party, for Congress, and for the House of

Representatives in foreign policy making. As a conservative nationalist, he

concluded that active U.S. membership in an international organization

promised the global order most conducive to preserving America's free hand.

This account illuminates an important strand of the wartime internationalist

consensus, which provided the foundation for bipartisan support of American

foreign policy in the four decades of the cold war. It is not surprising that

some GOP conservatives are now abandoning this consensus. As these

rightwingers see it, the collapse of the Communist "aggressor" and the undis-

puted military hegemony of the United States remove the need for sustained

internationalism. Conservatives like Patrick Buchanan are now attempting to

retool for a new world order in which environmental calamity and internal

problems such as economic and social malaise appear to pose greater threats

to American national security than do foreign aggression and international

disorder.

support an internationalist policy, becoming in the late 1940s an important House architect of

containment. Not until 1951-52 did his foreign policy stance again become a serious campaign

issue. See Livingston, "Ohio Congressman John M. Vorys," chapters 4 and 5. For constituent

mail, see Fulbright Resolution folder, Box 79, JMV, and Peace Plans folder, Box II, JMV.