James W. Gerard

For other people named James Gerard, see James Gerard (disambiguation).

James W. Gerard
Gerard in 1916
Treasurer of the Democratic National Committee
In office August 11, 1924 – June 1932
Preceded by	Wilbur W. Marsh
Succeeded by	Frank C. Walker
7th United States Ambassador to Germany
In office October 29, 1913 – February 5, 1917
President	Woodrow Wilson
Preceded by	John G. A. Leishman
Succeeded by	Ellis Loring Dresel (Acting, 1921)
Personal details
Born	James Watson Gerard III (1867-08-25)August 25, 1867 Geneseo, New York
Died	September 6, 1951(1951-09-06) (aged 84) Southampton, New York
Education	Columbia University (A.B., A.M.) New York Law School (LL.B.)
Military service
Allegiance	United States
Branch/service	United States Army New York National Guard
Years of service	1892–1904
Rank	Major
Unit	1st Brigade
Battles/wars	Spanish–American War

James and Mary Gerard in 1916

James Watson Gerard III (August 25, 1867 – September 6, 1951) was a United States lawyer, diplomat, and justice of the New York Supreme Court.

Early life

Gerard was born in Geneseo, New York. His father, James Watson Gerard Jr., was a lawyer and Democratic Party politician in New York. and his grandfather, also James Watson Gerard, was a noted trial lawyer and civic reformer in New York.

He graduated from Columbia University (A.B. 1890; A.M. 1891) and from New York Law School (LL.B. 1892).

Career

Gerard was chairman of the Democratic campaign committee of New York County for four years. He served on the National Guard of the State of New York for four years. He served through the Spanish–American War (1898) on the staff of General McCoskry Butt. From 1900 to 1904, he was quartermaster, with the rank of major, of the 1st Brigade of the Guard. He was elected to the New York Supreme Court in 1907, where he served as a judge until 1911.

U.S. Ambassador to Germany

Under 28th President Woodrow Wilson (18xx-1924, served 1913-1921), Gerard served as the American Ambassador to the German Empire (Germany) in Central Europe. from 1913 to 1917.

In the New York state elections in 1914, although still busily serving overseas in Europe, diplomat Gerard was selected as the regular Democratic Party (of longtime local municipal "machine politics" organization of infamous Tammany Hall) candidate for the seat of U.S. Senator from New York. He defeated the opposing liberal / progressive Anti-Tammany Hall and novice candidate, a young (then walking) Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882-1945), of up-river Hyde Park, in blue-blood and heavily Dutch ancestry populated Dutchess County on the lower Hudson River in the Democratic local primary election, but Gerard still lost in the general election that November to the opposing conservative Republican Party nominee James W. Wadsworth, Jr. (1877-1952, served 1915-1927) who in victory became New York State's Senator in Washington that following January 1915 for the next 12 years.

At the outbreak of World War I, that same year overseas in July / August 1914, American representative Gerard assumed the care of British interests in the German Empire (Germany) when war was declared, later visiting the camps in which British military and civilian prisoners were confined, and did much to alleviate their conditions. His responsibilities were further increased by the fact that the German diplomatic interests in now enemy countries of France, Britain, and Russian Empire (Russia) were also placed in the care of the neutral American embassies in the capitals of those countries, which made the American embassy in Berlin become a sort of clearing house of passing information. From first-hand knowledge, he settled the question, (much disputed among the German officials themselves), as to the official attitude of the Kaiser's German government toward the violation of neighboring Belgian neutrality (a term from the old Congress of Vienna peace conference a century before in 1815), when they invaded, bypassing the extensive heavy French defensive fortifications along the French-German border, passing through on their way to strike at northern France and the main target of their capital of Paris.

At the request of the Kaiser / German Emperor's foreign minister Gottlieb von Jagow (1863-1935, served 1913-1916), after the first conflict of the war in the West of the Battle and Fall of Liège in mid-August 1914 on the border, Ambassador Gerard served as intermediary for the Imperial German government for passing an initial offer to the Belgians for peace and giving them an indemnity if they would grant passage to Imperial German troops through their country. On August 10, 1914, the Kaiser Wilhelm II placed in Gerard's hands a telegram addressed personally to American President Wilson that declared that Belgian neutrality "had to be violated by Germany on strategical grounds." At the request of a high German official, the telegram was not made public as the Kaiser had wished and requested, but instead was sent privately along to the President at the White House in Washington.

Almost a year later, during the Germans' undersea submarine (U-boat) attack campaign in the North Atlantic Ocean against British shipping around their British Isles coasts and especially convoys coming eastwards from North America of the United States and Canada. Especially after the tragic disaster sinking by the torpedoing from an attacking Imperial German Navy (German: "Kaiserliche Marine") submarine of the trans-Atlantic huge steamship liner RMS Lusitania off the southern coast of Ireland with many American citizens and residents as passengers on board, on May 7, 1915, causing their deaths and widespread anti-German feelings, Gerard's position in Europe became more difficult as the issue arose again of German use of unrestricted submarine warfare.

The Imperial German government finally asked him to leave the country in January 1917. Diplomatic relations were broken off shortly later on February 3, and he left Germany. Wwr was declared by the American president and Congress in April 1917. He was detained for a short time because of unsubstantiated rumors that the Imperial German ambassador in America at Washington was being mistreated and that German merchant ships had been confiscated. When these rumors were disproved, he was allowed to depart. He retired from diplomatic service and the United States Department of State a few months later in July 1917.

Later career

He took up the practice of law in New York City. The George H. Doran Company, publishers of New York City published two books Gerard wrote on his experiences, My Four Years in Germany, released in 1917, and the following year, Face to Face with Kaiserism. My Four Years in Germany was also filmed in 1918 as a documentary film / silent / black and white film. Gerard was of major incidental importance in the rise of Warner Brothers movie studios and producers as his best-selling book My Four Years in Germany was the source of the Warner's first nationally syndicated / released film of the same name.

Gerard once said in a speech, "The Foreign Minister of Germany once said to me 'your country does not dare do anything against Germany, because we have in your country five hundred thousand German reservists [emigrants] who will rise in arms against your government if you dare to make a move against Germany.' Well, I told him that that might be so, but that we had five hundred thousand - and one - lamp posts in this country, and that was where those reservists would be hanging the day after they tried to rise."

Upon returning to the U.S., former Ambassador Gerard went back to practicing law. He remained heavily involved in subsequent Democratic Party politics. He was the treasurer for the Democratic National Committee (1924–1932) and played a leading role 15 years later in the nomination of then Governor of New York, Franklin D. Roosevelt in the 1932 presidential election and the 1932 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, when FDR electrified the nation by flying for the first time from his Hyde Park, New York home on the Hudson River to the Midwest convention hall to accept the nomination in person and give a nation-wide rip-roaring stem-winder of a speech broadcasting over the radio waves to the American audience of millions.

After an unsuccessful brief political campaign himself only two years after returning home from his diplomatic post in war-torn Europe, for the Democratic Party nomination as U.S. president in the 1920 presidential election (won that year by James M. Cox (1870-1957), Governor of Ohio, for President and Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882-1945), of New York for Vice President, but they were defeated that year by the opposing Republican Party ticket led by U.S. Senator Warren G. Harding (1865-1923), also of Ohio, who after his victory served as 29th President, 1921-1923, but a shortened tragic scandal-plauged term of three years before suddenly dying while on a Pacific Ocean western coast train trip. A century later, judged by American academic historians as one of the worst American presidents in history (plus considering his numerous corrupt, indicted / imprisoned political appointments including in his presidential cabinet. A "President Gerard" would possibly have been much better!!).

Ambassador Gerard then ceased active pursuit of elected office but accepted and enjoyed a central role in U.S. Democratic Party politics and civic affairs for the next 30 years as a public speaker, fundraiser, consultant, and mass media contributor / writer of newspaper / magazine columns and articles plus giving free political advice for the next three decades during the "Roaring '20s" and subsequent "hard times" of the Great Depression of the 1930s and following renewed global crisis and renewed German threat in the Second World War in the 1940s, prior to his death in 1951..

In the pivotal / crucial year on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean of 1933, Gerard reviewed German National Socialist ("Nazi") Party dictator / "Fuherer" Adolf Hitler (1889-1945)'s polemic diatribe book of political / economic / historical / social and especially racial heritage views which unfortunately presaged the future beginning only five years later. Hitler's book written a decade earlier from his prison cell in 1923 was called Mein Kampf (meaning "My Struggle") and published in two successive volumes in 1925 / 1926. Gerard wrote his review article seven years later in October 1933, (only ten months after Hitler came to power appointed as German chancellor (prime minister / premier) that January, and seven months after FDR's inauguration as 32nd President in March), was for the nation-wide influential The New York Times Book Review Sunday newspaper insert. His critique was given prominent display, occupied the entire front page of the section and continued inside. "Hitler is doing much for Germany," Gerard began, citing "his unification of the Germans, his destruction of communism, his training of the young, his creation of a Spartan State animated by patriotism, his curbing of parliamentary government, so unsuited to the German character; his protection of the right of private property," which he said "are all good". But then he went on to condemn Hitler's anti-Semitism. "We have all of us a right to criticize, to boycott a nation which reverts to the horrible persecutions of the Dark Ages, we have a right to form a blockade of public opinion about this misguided country," he wrote. Gerard concluded, "It is with sadness, tinged with fear for the world's future, that we read Hitler's hymn of hate against that race which has added so many names to the roll of the great in science, in medicine, in surgery, in music and the arts, in literature and all uplifting human endeavor."

Ambassador Gerard's final book was an autobiography and life career memoirs, My First Eighty-three Years in America published in 1951, the year he died. My First Eighty-Three Years in America (1951).

Personal life

Gerard's wife, the former Mary Augusta Daly (called “Molly”), was the daughter of copper magnate Marcus Daly, head of the Anaconda Copper Mining Company that developed the mines of Butte, Montana, and built the town of Anaconda, Montana. They had no children. After both of Mary's parents died, she was one of the heirs to the Daly ranch, the Bitter Root Stock Farm, north of Hamilton, Montana, where the couple had frequently visited. Gerard oversaw a number of the legal interests of the Daly family, and he purchased a cattle ranch of his own in the area. Today the University of Montana at Missoula, holds his collected papers and memorabilia.

Gerard died on September 6, 1951, aged 84 years, in Southampton (Suffolk County) on Long Island, of New York state. He was interred at Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn, New York City.

References

•  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Gilman, D. C.; Peck, H. T.; Colby, F. M., eds. (1928). "Gerard, James Watson". New International Encyclopedia (1st ed.). New York: Dodd, Mead.

Further reading

• Barthold, Theodore Richard. "Assignment to Berlin: the embassy of James W. Gerard, 1913-1917" (PhD Temple University, 1981). online
• Flanagan, Jason C. "Woodrow Wilson's" Rhetorical Restructuring": The Transformation of the American Self and the Construction of the German Enemy." Rhetoric & Public Affairs 7.2 (2004): 115-148. online
• Mitchell, Charles Reed. "New Message To America: James W. Gerard's 'Beware' and World War I Propaganda" Journal of Popular Film (1975) 4#5 pp 275–295.

Primary sources

• Gerard, James W. My four years in Germany (1917) online
• Gerard, James W. Face to Face with Kaiserism (1918) online
• Gerard, James Watson. My first eighty-three years in America: the memoirs of James W. Gerard (Doubleday, 1951).

External links

• Works by James Watson Gerard at Project Gutenberg
• Works by or about James W. Gerard at the Internet Archive
• International Radio Journalism: History, Theory and Practice (1998)
• James Watson Gerard Papers (University of Montana Archives)