Charles R. Crane's Crusade for the Arabs, 1919-39 Author(s): F. W. Brecher Source: Middle Eastern Studies, Vol.

24, No. 1 (Jan., 1988), pp. 42-55 Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd. Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4283221 . Accessed: 30/05/2011 12:53
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Charles R. Crane's Crusade for the Arabs, 1919-39

F. W.Brecher

'To CHARLESR. CRANE aptly nicknamedHarunal-Rashid, affectionately'

- GeorgeAntonius,The Arab Awakening, 19381

CharlesCrane(1858-1939) was the American symbol of friendshipand supportfor the Arab cause in the Near East duringthe inter-warperiod. He achieved this status in 1919 as co-head of the Commissionof Inquiry which President Wilson, while at the Paris Peace Conference, sent to the region in order directly to ascertain the political wishes of the former Ottomansubjects.2The Commission strongly endorsedthe Arab nationalistview that Franceshould be kept out of the Levant, and thatthe was shelved4 Zionists should be curbed in Palestine.3Although its reyport and not made public, even unofficially, until late 1922, the very dispatch of the Commission was seen by many as indicatingAmericanapprovalof the Arab struggle for self-determination.For example, soon after the completion of the Commission's work, Cranereceived a letter6from 'the Presidentof the Arabic Association and the Delegate of Palestine' which stated: The Arab inhabitantsof Syria and Palestine will never forget your kind deeds, for presenting their rights to the American nation and changingto good the general idea of the West concerningour cause ... We are sure that you still are struggling for our cause. Crane,indeed, continued 'to struggle' for the Arab cause. As a private, independentlywealthy citizen,7he cultivatedhis relationswith the Arabs throughoutthe next two decades by sponsoring an active program of 'practical philanthropy',8the most impressive result of which was the discovery of oil in easternArabia.With the advent of HitlerianGennany, Crane,in what was to be a final burstof energy, workedin Europeandthe Near East to organize a purposefuleffort by the Vatican, the Arabs, and Germany to counter the 'Jewish menace' to the Christianand Islamic worlds.9Despite his denial to Secretaryof State CordellHull, he probably did financearmspurchasesin 1938 by the GrandMufti of Jerusalem,who was then leading a revolt against British rule in Palestine.'0Earlier, in 1922, when popular anti-Frenchdemonstrationserupted during Crane's

CRANE'S CRUSADE FOR THE ARABS, 1919-39

43

visit to Damascus, he was accused by the French of provoking and financingrevolt in Syria."' Crane exercised an important influence on the personal attitudes toward the Middle East of many leading Americans, such as Barnard's Virginia Gildersleeve, who would take an importantpartin efforts of the 1940s to persuadethe US governmentto favor Arabover Zionist goals in
Palestine."

Crane's focus on Arab affairs came relatively late in his remarkable career,which also concentrated,in its international aspects, on two other greatbranchesof the humanfamily, the Slavs andthe Chinese.'3President Wilson triedunsuccessfully for a full year, 1913-14, to persuadehim to go as US Ambassadorto Russia, which he had been visiting and studyingfor decades.'4 After the Bolsheviks came into power in November 1917, Crane played a key role in Wilson's fateful decision of August 1918 to intervenein Russia in order 'to rescue' Czech troops there;it was he who introducedThomas Masarykto Colonel House and the Presidentin June 1918, and who worked with that futurePresidentto overcome Wilson's hesitancies.'5Masaryk'sson, Jan, would write to Craneon 7 August 1928 that the Masaryk family referred to him as the 'godfather of Czechoslovakia'.'6 Charles' son, Richard, was the first US Minister to that country. Crane was twice appointedUS Minister to China, whose interests he championed,particularlyas against Japanesedesigns. The first appointment was in 1909, by William Howard Taft; however, that President recalled his outspoken Minister even before he could arriveat his post.'7 Crane did succeed in serving as President Wilson's Minister in Peking, 1920-21; andin 1931 was officially appointedby the Chineseas 'Honorary Advisor to the Nationalist Government'.'8 In domestic affairs, too, Crane was a familiar political and cultural figure at both the national and local levels. In addition to having been Woodrow Wilson's Deputy Finance Chairmanfor his two Presidential campaigns, he was Chairmanof the Mayor of Chicago's Commission on Unemployment and served as an officer in both the Municipal Voters' League and Senator Robert La Follette's National Progressive RepublicanLeague. Following the loss of close family in a movie house fire, Cranesponsoredthe FreemanReport,which led to the passage of the country's first theater fire laws at the tum of the century. Other noteworthy activities included: endowing a seminal, pioneering programof Russian studies at the University of Chicago; serving as a founding directorof the Marine Biological Laboratoryat Woods Hole, Massachusetts, and as a Trustee for the two American Protestant missionary colleges at Constantinople. He received honorary doctorates from Harvard and Wisconsin. Among Crane's many, sustained friendships were, to mention only the Americans: Henry Ford, George Westinghouse, Charles W. Eliot, A. Lawrence Lowell, John Dewey, Alexander G. Bell, Jane Addams, Lillian Wald, Norman Hapgood, Ida Tarbell, Louis D. Brandeis and Adolph Ochs. He was an honorarypall-bearerat Woodrow Wilson's funeral.'

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MIDDLE EASTERN STUDIES

In sum, CharlesCranewas a significantAmericanfigure,whose impact on his world has left a discemible legacy to our own. The purposeof this article is to provide a basis for systematic examinationand evaluationof Crane's work, with particularreference to matters impinging on Near Eastem affairs.

II When Crane retumed to Damascus for a visit in 1922, he naturally received an enthusiasticreceptionby the local Arableaders, who took the occasion to organize mass protests against France, which had forcibly occupied Syria in 1920.Y Cranewas swiftly and discreetlyusheredout of the area. Shortly thereafter, he leamed from a Cairo source that the Frenchmilitaryauthoritieswere accusinghim of having providedfunds to one of the leading Syriannationalists,Shabendar,for use in financingthe violent demonstrations;and, that there were reports,formally denied by the French,that he had been sentenced in absentiato 20 years' imprisonment.2' The episode did not harm his image in the Levant as a staunch defender of Arab rights. It was during the course of this 1922 visit that Crane received an invitation from Emir Abdullah of Trans-Jordan, one of the sons of the leader of the Arab wartimerebellion againstTurkey,King Hussein of the Hejaz, to visit his father at Jiddah.22 This was accomplishedin 1923, at which time Cranewas shown Husssein's (doctored)versionof his famous correspondence,in Arabic, with Sir Henry McMahon;at the time of the correspondence,1915-16, McMahon was British High Commissionerin Egypt. This version had it that McMahon expressly included Palestine within the teritory of the independentArab state(s) which he said the British Governmentwould support,if Hussein were to lead an effective revolt against the Ottoman Turks. Crane was subsequently to use this materialto make the case in the United States that Englandhad promised Palestineto the Arabs a full two years before the BalfourDeclarationof 2 November 1917.23 Also of interest is a letter he wrote to Antonius on 22 September 1936: I have just had a visit with one who knows Near Easternaffairsvery well and also British Near Eastem politics. He says that the Foreign Office has no copy of the papers and promises sent to Hussein. I suppose the original has been stolen and probablyevery effort in the world will be made to get hold of Hussein's copy. This man confirmed Hussein's statement to me of the Govemrnment's effort,
through Lawrence, to get back Hussein's papers ... it is more

importantthan ever that the photostaticcopies be as widely and as wisely distributedas possible ... Of course, when Great Britain in 1939 finally did publish the actual
correspondence, it was at variance with Hussein's version and was sufficiently ambiguous as to pennit the English to contend that Palestine was,

CRANE'S CRUSADE FOR THE ARABS, 1919-39

45

indeed, excluded from the independent Arab state(s) envisaged by McMahon.24 A finalnote on Crane'scontactswith the Husseinfamily:as late as 1929, when he was over 70 years of age, Craneundertookwhat was, for a nonArab, a near-unprecedented,arduous overland trip from Baghdad into the Wahabidesert to visit King Abdul Aziz ibn-Saud.In Baghdad,Crane a friendsince 1919 and hadbeen the guest of honorof Iraq'sKing Feisal,25 anotherof King Hussein's sons. The Saudi andHussein families were long bitter enemies, and a few years earlier ibn-Saud had succeeded in displacing Hussein from the Hejaz. During the course of his trip, while near the Kuwaiti border, Crane's party was attacked, evidently by an independent band of tribesmen, and his travelling companion, the ReverendHenry Bilkert, was shot dead; Cranehimself escape unhurtbut cut shorthis trip and left the area. Soon thereafter,on 20 February1929, he received a message from Faisal ibn Abdul Aziz expressing Saudi distressthat 'the friendof the Arabs shouldhave been attackedin Arabian lands' and blaming Iraq for having allowed the attackto occur. III Crane's personal, direct contacts with the leaders of the Yemen and Saudi Arabia began in the late 1920s, when neither was diplomatically recognized by the United States. In 1927, he served as 'unofficial intermediary' for the US representativeat Aden, J. Loder Park, in an attempt to elicit from Yemen's Imam Yahya, a request for a treaty of friendship and commerce.6 While Washingtonquickly squashedPark's initiativeas 27 premature, Crane did develop a good relationship with the Imman and initiated a series of personally financed public works projects and mineralssurveys.8 In 1931, Cranepersonallymet ibn-Saud,who accepted his offer to finance a survey for water resources.29 Accordingly, K.S. Twitchell, an American engineer who had been conducting the Cranefinanced surveys in Yemen, was dispatched to Saudi Arabia, where he soon pointed out to the King the likelihood that there were substantialoil deposits in eastem Arabia. Ibn-Saud authorized Twitchell to seek out commercial arrangements,as a direct result of which ibn-Saud signed his first oil exploration contract, in May 1933, with Standard Oil of California.Impressively, Crane, while allowing the data collected at his expense to be used freely by StandardOil and others,steadfastlydeclined lucrative 'offers of participation'in the commercial arrangementsthey had with Saudi Arabia;he explained that his interestsfrom the startwere purely philanthropicand would remain that way. This led Twitchell to dedicate his 1947 work, SaudiArabia, as follows: To the memory of CHARLES R. CRANE the great American whose practical philanthropy was the foundation of the present development of the kingdom of his esteemed friend, King Abdul Aziz ibn-Saud. Crane'srelationswith both the Imamandthe King enabledhim to play a

46

MIDDLEEASTERN STUDIES

mediating role in the territorialclashes between the two which, in 1934, threatenedto expand into full-scale war. His appeal to Arab solidarity apparently was of some influence in the successful defusing of the confrontation, as suggested by the substantive and appreciativereport sent to Craneby the King on the details of his settlementwith the Imam.30 Of course, the Palestinian problem figured importantly in the discussions Cranehad with the Saudiking. Duringhis March1931 visit, with Antonius serving as interpreterand recorder, Crane stated that 'Russia
was really in the grip of Jews and foreigners ... the King ... added that he

had realized for some time that the Jews were powerful in Russia'.31 In 1933, the King's Ministerin Cairoparticipatedin a 'Muslim Committee' thatCranewas attemptingto organizetherewith a view to its enteringinto formal discussions with the Vatican for the purpose of carryingout a
program of 'cooperative action ... against the communistic, atheistic

In November 1933 Craneadvised his seven-manorganizing onslaught'.32 group, as recordedby Antonius, that The endeavor on the part of the Jews to returnto Asia after an
absence of nearly 2,000 years ... was but another phase of [an organized campaign against faith and religion] ... About a fortnight ago ... he had a conversation with the Papal Secretary [Cardinal

Pacelli, the futurePope Pius XII]. He found the lattervery receptive and interestedin the idea ... He [CardinalPacelli] went as far as to suggest that the Grand Mufti might meet the Latin Patriarchin Jerusalemand initiate conversations. Antonius goes on to report that the Muslim representativesassured Cranethat they would 'appoint an authoritative committee to go into the matter and initiate conversations with the Catholic Church'. Following his returnto Rome from Cairo, Craneheld furthermeetings at the Vatican,wherehe had 'a day with the Nuncio who was going downto Egypt, Palestine and countriesnearby, and his instructionswere to get in touch with this Muslim Committeeand work out some practicalmethods of proceeding'.33There is no evidence in the material available to the presentwriterthat this Muslim-Vatican dialogue ever actuallygot started as a direct consequence of Crane's efforts. Crane met Reichschancellor Hitler in Berlin on 6 October as a preliminary step to his meetings in Rome and Cairo. The session was for him by US AmbassadorWilliam Dodd, a formerProfessorof arranged Historyat the Universityof Chicago, following Crane'srequestin a letter of 17 September: I have importantengagements in Rome the latter part of October with the highest Prelates there [on 'the Jewish problem'] and incidentalmatters.Before going thereI wish very muchthatI could have a heart to heart talk quietly with Mr. Hitler. In a letter which apparentlycrossed with Crane's AmbassadorDodd had written him on 16 September34 that

CRANE'S CRUSADE FOR THE ARABS, 1919-39

47

When I have occasion to speak unofficially to eminent Germans,I have said very franklythat they had a serious problembut that they did not know how to solve it. The Jews had held a greatmanymore of the key positions in Germany than their numbers or their talents
entitled them to ...

On 5 November 1933, Cranewrote to Lowell that Dodd 'arrangedfor me to have a full free talk with the Reichschancellor'. Following his meeting with Hitler, Crane made highly complimentaryremarksto the press about him, including that his 'gestures and point blank statements remind me of Theodore Roosevelt'. Crane would be a repeat guest of Dodd's in Berlin. For example, he wroteon 18 June 1834: 'Dr. Dodd has askedme to come andstay with him ... andhas promisedsome good interviews'. On 24 July 1935, he wroteto Dodd: 'I am especially indebted to you for the nice luncheon party and the cordial talk with Dr. Schacht ... I think that Germanyis now well aroundthe corner with her morale higher than the morale of any other people in Europe'. That Dodd had an extra-curricular interestin Crane's philanthropic activities is evident in a letterthe Ambassadorwrote him on 19 September 1935, asking on a private and confidentialbasis that he considerendowing a chair at the Universityof Virginiafor the teachingof 'objective' US and world history. As in the case of Crane'sdiscussionswith ibn-Saud,his exchangesabout Palestine with the GrandMufti of Jerusalem,Haj Amin al-Husseini, and other Arab leaders in the Levant, as recordedby Antonius,turnedon the general agreementthat there was, in 1931, a real menace directed at Islam and Christianity,and that it was essential that the aims and motives of the Soviet leaders be made
known and understood ... [Crane went on to say that] in the

particular case of Palestine, this question took on a particular significance, because of the fact that the Jews who had designs on Palestine were closely in sympathywith the subversive aims of the Soviets. In 1933, Crane told the Mufti that, it was a matter of common knowledge (which the experience of Russia had amply demonstrated) that the political Jews everywhere aimed at the eventual destructionof religious life. The only Church in the West which seemed to him to be fully alive to thatdanger,and to possess the necessary powers andorganizationto deal with it, was
the Catholic Church ...

As late as 20 July 1938, when the Mufti was clandestinelyleading an armed revolt against British rule in Palestine, Crane wrote Antonius: 'I enclose a little check for the GrandMuftiwhich pleasegive him to use as he thinksbest'. Despite this action, he would on 6 October1938, writeto Mrs Cordell Hull: 'Please also tell Cordell that ... my relations with [my Moslem friends] have been entirely peaceful and cultural(water works,

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MIDDLE EASTERNSTUDIES

bridges, roadways, etc.), and I have never spent a penny for any kind of militaryequipment'. On the basis of this evidence alone, one would have to be skeptical about the truthof other denials by Cranethat he financed illegal arms purchases - for the Syrian, Shabendar,in 1922, as noted above; and for the anti-Bolshevik Cossack General,Kalidin, in 1917-18, as was 'the suspicion among Americanofficials then serving in Russia'.36

IV The other side of Crane's Near East coin, which gave his work in that regionmuch of its context and energy, was his profoundconcernaboutthe 'Jewish menace' to the established, religious-based civilizations of the world, with the Anglo-Saxon people at the center.37 It is not a question of whether, but to what extent, Cranewas actively engaged in the dissemination of anti-Semitic materials,generally of the kind most closely associated with the output of Tsarist Russia. Even before the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-05, when the production of these materials flowered with publication of the gross forgery, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, 8 Crane is known to have distributed 'Yiddish literature',as acknowledgeby his friend,the futureSecretaryof the Interiorunder Taft, Walter L. Fisher, who 'greatly enjoyed' it. By 1910, Cranehad latched on to the Protocol's core idea, that there was a millenia-old Jewish-Freemasonyconspiracyto dominatethe world. This is broughtout most clearly in a letter to him of 27 August 1910, from his good friend, the British writer and Ambassador,James Bryce, who was about to departon a trip to Latin America: I will do my best to make inquiriesand ascertainanythingI can with regardto the singularmasonic movement. From time to time I have heard things about its influence in Eastem and Southern Europe, but never, so far, in Latin America. Some of the other facts you tell me, especially regardingthe Jews, are quite new to me. I suppose [themasonic movement] has everywherea stronganti-clericaland in some cases even anti-religious character.The Roman Church, of course, everywhere opposes it. Not bashful about his views, Cranewrote directly to PresidentWilson on 10 February1913 that, except for Brandeis, 'all of the other important Jews are firstJews and then Americansanddo not hesitateto sacrificereal Americaninterestsat any time for whatthey conceive to be Jewish ones . 39 In writing this, Crane presumablyhad most in mind Jacob Schiff, who, since at least 1909, had been his be?te noire. He blamed Schiff for his recall by President Taft as U.S. Minister to China.' That action, he felt, was the result of a Japanese-Jewish cabal against him, because he had been an outspoken defender of Russia and opponent of the 1905 indemnificationaward to Japan by mediator Theodore Roosevelt; and, because he defended Chinese interestsagainstthe combined efforts of the Japanese and Jewish New York bankers, such as Schiff, to raid that
,

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49

country's resources. As Craneon 13 June 1933, was to write to Colonel House: I seemed to be the only outspoken friend the Russians had ... antiSemite - it ought to be a title of honor ... [Taft] was hypnotizedby Teddy's doctrine of giving the Jews at least all they wanted ... Also, soon after the incident of the recall itself, Crane wrote to his associate and adviser on Chinese affairs, Thomas F. Millard, that it was the Schiff/Warburggroup of 'HamburgJews' which got Taft to fire him; Millardfully agreed,perhapsin partbecause it was with his guidancethat Cranehad given an impolitic speech in New York on the Chinaquestion,a speech which contributedto Taft's disillusion with him. Still again, on 5 April 1916, Crane wrote that the GermanJews with Mr. Schiff at the head ... have for a long time controlled the bridgebetween Russia and Americaand so the 98 million Christians here have had no relationswith the 170 million over there [the U.S. having had broken relations with Russia under PresidentTaft as a result of Tsarist discriminationagainst American Jews]. Crane maintained that the Bolshevik Revolution represented 'not a revolutionbut a conquest' of Russia by the Jews.4" From the time of that event, he would see the Jews as a monolithicgroup:'The rightwing of fine Jews which charmour intellectualscut no ice in the organization(even in Palestine), the left wing runningright over it as it does everything and everyone else, but the right wing has to keep mum, however much it disapproves '.42 In a remarkable display of ideology overridingwhat had hitherto been a warm friendship, Crane also could now say of Lillian Wald, that she played a very importantrole in bringing about the Russian Revolution. Trotskywas always in touch with herand followed her orders. She always could get any amountof money fromthe Schiff-Warburg farriily,and the night before Trotsky sailed for Russia, he and Jacob Schiff had a secret meeting at Miss Wald's, and Schiff turnedover fifty thousand dollars to Trotsky to use shepherdinghis flock to Russia.43 Interestingly,this story is similar to that contained in a (forged) document, published in 1919 by a monarchistjoumal at Rostov-on-the-Don, which was attributedto 'the American Secret Service' and allegedly proved that the Bolsheviks received a large subsidy from Schiff to carry out the revolution.44 Going back even further,Protocol's folklore includes the myth45 that The Russian Govemment had leamed that at meetings of the B'nai B'rith in New York in 1893, Jacob Schiff had been namedchairnan of the Committee on the revolutionarymovement in Russia.
The distinct - and intriguing - possibility should not be overlooked that the 'American Secret Service' source of the Russian monarchist article is

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MIDDLEEASTERN STUDIES

the very same as the 'State DepartmentSecret Police' source that Crane, in a letter of 5 February 1921, used as the basis for the above-cited story of Schiff giving Trotsky 50 thousanddollars. In fact, a certain US Army Intelligence officer based in New York late in the war, HarrisA. Houghton, MD, is generally credited with having published the first Americanedition of the Protocols,underthe title TheJewishPeril; he did so, anonymously,in 1920. Houghtonhad obtainedthe materialduringthe war from an ex-Tsarist agent, Boris Brasal, and, in 1919, sought support for its broad dissemination;he also conducted a press briefingon it on 9 February1919, in New York.`6 Crane was in the city at that time and, particularlygiven his own interests,may well have known of Houghton's efforts. Moreover,he and Houghton had several mutual acquaintances.For example, they both knew MauriceLeon, who was a Jewish lawyer in New York who helped Brasal, Houghton and, later, Henry Ford to identify 'Gernan Jewish traitors'to the US;47and, they knew C.C. Daniels, the brotherof Wilson's Secretaryof the Navy, J. Daniels - C.C. not only had Houghton as his family physician but also helped Crane's friend, Ford, carry out his anti-Semitic campaign as a paid staff-member.' Given these facts, and recalling that Crane was intimately involved in Kalidin's anti-Bolshevik cause, which was based precisely in the Cossack region where the monarchistjoumal was published, one cannot discount the likelihood thathe and Houghtonco-operatedin having Protocolmaterial'as widely andas wisely distributed Theircommongoal was to alertthe as possible'.49 US to the true significance of the Bolshevik movement in Russia and the need actively to oppose it. Finally, it should be noted that even in 1926, when many leading Americans had long rejected Ford's anti-Semitic campaign,j and Ford himself was on the verge of disowningit,5" Craneon 18 Novemberwas still sending him additionalpropaganda,'thinkingthat it might possibly be of interest to you or to your editor'.
V

Before the Bolshevik Revolution, Crane was able to speak in positive terms about individualJews and even about a world Jewish political role for the Jewish people, such as their serving as a 'naturalbridge between EuropeandAsia'.s This tinge of pro-Zionismwas consistentwith Crane's letter of 30 September 1914, recounting his recent conversation with PresidentWilson:
I discussed ... the situation of the Jews of the world and what we

should try to do for them when peace comes. This I had gone over with Mr. Brandeis [the head of the American Zionists] on my last visit with him. He is fast becoming the most importantJew in the
world ... inspired with longing to serve his race and especially the poorest and most down-trodden ...

This drawingof distinctions, as has been noted, ended with the Revo-

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51

lution, and, by the time of the First Administration of FranklinRoosevelt, Cranewould write Fortunemagazine on 30 May 1933 to complain about 'Felix Frankfurter - the very efficient eyes and ears of Brandeis- right in
the center of everything ...'. Similarly, he was to write to Colonel House

on 4 February1933, that It looks as though Franklinhas fallen entirely into [Jewish] hands. in the center of the Administration, With Felix Frankfurter as a sort of Benes, the really last word will come from the Supreme Court [i.e., Brandeis]andthe race's enormouscapacityfor mischief will be exercised everywherewithouta whisperor an opposinggesturefrom
us.

The issue of US immigrationlaws was a majorfocus of Crane'sattention duringthe 1920s and 1930s. He fought for tighteningthose laws:53 'If there were a Jewish quota, as there should be, the numbersof course would be very small, but they evade the letterof the law by coming in undernational names'. In the 1930s, he warnedagainstJewishefforts to controlthe office of the Labor Secretary 'on account of its influence on immigration' .S On 28 January1936, he wrote to the President on the subject of a movementunderwayto bringsomethinglike a 100,000 Jews out of
Germany ... There are 100,000 too many people in Palestine already and ... the Jews now own most of the valuable land. The place of all

places for the Jews to go is Russia. In a letter of 24 May 1933, published by the New York Times, Crane wrote that 'The Germansare the best inforrned aboutconditionsin Russia
...

[The Nationalist Government] is going to block the Communists

...

Palestine is wide open to Communistrefugees'. A major disappointmentto Crane was Roosevelt's 1933 diplomatic recognition of the Soviet Union - an act which Crane dubbed 'Jewish recognition. He wrote to Lowell on 29 Novemberof thatyear: 'It seems to me that Germanyhas practicallytaken over the moralleadershipof the world'. However, in June 1937, following a visit to the USSR, Crane remarkablychanged his tune. He now pronounced that the Russian people had regainedcontrol of their country;Russia, he wrote Roosevelt on 24 October1937, has a 'new permanent wave which I thinkwill set quite a fashion in the next forty or fifty years'. Knowingly or not, Crane, by this reversal of position, preparedthe ground for what otherwise would have been for him, had he lived a bit longer into 1939, a total disaster:the Molotov-RibbentropPact. Here was a vivid justification, if one can be found, for Virginia Gildersleeve's calling Cranea 'genius', if an 'unusualandeccentric' one. In this instance, with Hitlerin 1939-41 embracingnot only the Russiansbut also the Grand Mufti, the prophetic Crane, had he been able to observe these events, could only have baskedin the glory of seeing the apparent fulfillmentof his fondest dreams:the drawingtogetherof his beloved Russian people with

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those of Germany and the Arab world as a core Christian-Muslim coalition against the all-pervasive forces of the Jewish-Freemason conspiracy."6

NOTES Unless otherwise indicated, all unpublished sources listed herein are to be found in The Papers of Charles R. Crane, at the Bakhmetev Archives of the Columbia University Library. 1. This work is generally still accepted as the standard English-language history of the Arab nationalist movement. For example, R. Sanders, The High Walls of Jerusalem (London, 1983), p.688: 'As for the Sherif Hussein, the Hejaz, and the Arab revolt, the standard work is Antonius'. A Christian Palestinian Arab, Antonius was not only a writer but, as pointed out by R. Lacey in his Kingdom (London, 1982), a significant actor in his own right in this movement. He served after the war as Secretary to General Gilbert Clayton of the British Occupation Administration, and he was the Secretary to the Arab Delegations at the 1939 negotiations in London. It should also be noted that Antonius was in the employ of Charles Crane; for example, see Crane's letter of 24 January 1934, and Antonius' letter of 3 April 1938. The Harun al-Rashid in the dedication was the patron of a brilliant period of culture at Baghdad (V. Gildersleeve's, Many a Good Crusade). 2. The Commission's other leader was Henry C. King, President of Oberlin College. 3. The text of the report is contained in The Paris Peace Conference, U.S., State Department, Vol. 12, pp.745pp. For an analysis of the King-Crane Commission, see Frank W. Brecher, 'Woodrow Wilson and the Origins of the Arab-Israeli Conflict', American Jewish Archives (April 1987). 4. As explained by William Phillips, Assistant Secretary of State, in a letter to Crane of 30 October 1919: 'I have read every word of your report, which, by the way, is a masterly document. I do not believe, however, that there is the slightest possibility of your conclusions being adopted by the Senate'. 5. In a letter to CRC of July 6, 1922, ex-President Wilson authorized R. S. Baker's making 'public the report on Syria. Indeed I think this is a very timely moment for its publication'. The text of the report appeared in Publisher and Editor (December, 1922). 6. This 1919 letter (day/month unspecified) was from Abdel-Koder Masaphen. The recommendations of the King-Crane Commission were a standard feature of Arab appeals to the West to curb Zionism. For example, see ibn-Saud's 1938 message to President Roosevelt, and the Arab Office (Washington) publication, Palestine: The Solution (Washington, 1947). 7. The Chicago-based Crane Company, which is still in existence, manufactures metals. Especially after 'irreconcilable' policy disagreements in 1890 with his father, as a result of which he 'retired from business', Crane was largely freed of day-to-day office burdens and was granted a liberal financial arrangement. (For example, CRC letter of 11 May 1890). IHowever, he continued to have business interests and, in 1898, was instrumental in helping George Westinghouse obtain a $4 million contract from the Russian Government for installation of airbrakes on the Trans-Siberian Railroad - a landmark in U.S.-Russian commercial relations. 8. For 'practical philanthropy', see the dedication in K. S. Twitchell, Saudi Arabia (London, 1947); and Section III in the present text. 9. See Section III in the text. 10. See Section IV in the text. 11. See Section II in the text. 12. For example, Gildersleeve, Many a Good Crusade, op. cit., pp. 171ff. and 407ff., in the 1980 edition; and H. Fishman, American Protestantism and a Jewish State (1973), p.85.

CRANE'S CRUSADE FOR THE ARABS, 1919-39

53

Like Cranebefore her, Gildersleeveservedas Chairman of the Boardof Trusteesof the AmericanCollege for Girls at Constantinople. 13. Crane's selections of these off-the-beaten-pathlands followed naturally from the
impulse behind his inveterate travels: as a young man suffering from 'melancholy' and

,nervous illness', he began to travel 'not for tourismor study, but for excitement'. 14. A.S. Link (ed.), The Papers of Woodrow Wilson,55 Volumes, to date, Vol. 28, p.353 and Vol. 30, p.46. 15. Ibid., Vol. 48, p.273; Vol. 49, p.154. Also T.G. Masaryk, The Makingof a State (1969), pp.273, 275.
16. Jan was then married to one of Crane's daughters, Frances. 17. Taft acted, because of Crane's 'inability to curb his tongue in public and his headstrong desire to shape rather than execute policy'. D. Anderson, William Howard Taft (New York, 1968), p.245. 18. Telegram to CRC from the Chinese Government, 16 January 1931. 19. Communication from Mrs W. Wilson, 23 February 1924. 20. CRC Memoirs (unpublished), p.343. 21. Letter to CRC, 11 June 1922. 22. CRC letter, 8 January 1923. 23. For example, letter to Congressman Fish, Jr., 19 May 1933. King Hussein's misrepresentations of his correspondence with Sir McMahon are fully documented in Elie Kedourie, In the Anglo-Arab Labyrinth: The McMahon-Husayn Correspondence and its Interpretations, 1914-1939 (London, 1976), pp.224 ff. 24. The standard work on the Correspondence is Kedourie, In the Anglo-Arab Labyrinth, which includes a detailed discussion of the attempt by Husayn to represent his correspondence with McMahon as other than it really was. Also see Frank W. Brecher, 'Scholarship and the Diplomatic Roots of Israel', Jewish Social Studies (Spring, 1985). For the authoritative text of the correspondence, and the respective views of the British Government and the Arab Delegations in London at the time, see UK Foreign Office: Miscellaneous Papers 3 (1939), CMD 5957. 25. CRC letter, 4 January 1929. Crane had been a good friend of Feisal's since their 1919 meeting in Damascus, and he kept a bust of that leader in his home. 26. US State Department, Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States Vol. III for 1927, p.825, telegram from Vice-Consul Park, 15 March 1927; also letter to Crane from Park, 27 July 1927. 27. Ibid, pp.826-7: the State Department advised Park on 20 May 1927 that the US was 'not yet prepared to accord formal recognition to the native states which have been established in the Arabian peninsula since the World War', because of unsettled political conditions there and 'the unimportance of American interests'. On 10 February 1931, the US decided to continue to decline to recognize Yemen, but, with regard to Saudi Arabia, the State Department informed the UK that 'there appears to be no reason, however, why this Government should not recognize the Government of King Ibn Saud, provided that it is possible to obtain certain assurances from that Government', such as Most Favored Nation economic treatment and justice for foreigners. (Ibid., Vol. II for 1931, pp.547-50). Recognition was extended in May 1931, and one can reasonably conclude that Crane played a facilitating role in this development. It was not until February 1940 that the US appointed an Ambassador to Saudi Arabia, although resident in Cairo. (Ibid., Vol. IV for 1939, pp.824-8) 28. Letter from Imam Yahya of Yemen, 27 December 1927; and Twitchell, Saudi Arabia,
op. cit., passim.

29. After his 1931 visit, Crane described the King, as 'a fine type, much like Father Crane, Edison, Ford, Westinghouse - the great natural human brain entirely unspoiled by education except the education of vital experience'. Crane himself had an incomplete formal education, being obliged to drop out of his first year at Stevens Institute of Technology by physical and emotional illness. For the sources of the text's discussion of Crane's philanthropic work in Arabia, see Twitchell, Saudi Arabia, op. cit., pp. 143 ff. 30. CRC letter, 18 June 1934. 31. Antonius' notes on Crane's trips of the 1930s to Saudi Arabia and the Levant are separately filed in CRC Papers.

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MIDDLE EASTERN STUDIES

32. CRC letter, 13 May 1933; andAntonius'reportof 20 December1933, on Crane'sCairo meeting of 24 November 1933. The seven-mangroup which met with Craneincluded, in addition to the Saudi representative, al-Sabiq,Rashid Rida, ShafikPasha (Oriental League), al-Bakri (religious leader), Wali Pashi (ex-CabinetMinister), Abdel-Razek (theologian),and al-Maraghi(past and futurerectorof Al-Azhar). 33. CRC letter, 31 January1934. 34. Dodd's view on the power of the Jews in Germanywas remarkably similar to that of President Roosevelt, as reported by David Wyman, who refutes the alleged facts underlying that view (D. Wyman, The Abandonment of the Jews (Pantheon, 1985), p.313). Remarkably, Roosevelt used these 'facts' in a conversation on 17 January1943 at Casablancawith Vichy's Resident General of Morocco, General Nogues, to urge that 'the number of Jews engaged in the practice of the professions ... should be definitelylimited to the percentagethat the Jewish populationin NorthAfrica bearsto the whole of the North African population.(See US Foreign Relations,State Department, Volume on The Conferences at Washington, 1941-1942, and Casablanca, 1943,

pp.606-8.) 35. As reportedin an obituaryon Crane publishedby the New YorkHerald Tribune,16 February1939. 36. 'It was the suspicion among Americanofficials then serving in Russia that Mr. Crane himself was at that time giving private financial supportto Kalidin.' (G. Kennan,
Soviet-American Relations, 1917-1920 (1945), Vol. I, pp.l176-7). Kennan goes on to

say that, 'it would not be unreasonableto suppose that Crane, too, urged [U.S.] governmentalsupport to the Kalidin-Alksylev movement ...'; and that such private supportas Crane's lacked 'legal authorization'. 37. Crane himself was not concerned about the dogma of any particularreligion or denomination(he was by family backgrounda Presbyterian),but rather about 'the great spiritualmovementsof the world' (CRC letter, 10 November 1926). 38. N. Cohn, Warrant for Genocide(1969), passim. It should be noted that neitherin that work nor in any of the following references to published material concerning the Protocols, Ford's anti-Semiticcampaign,etc., is Crane'sname mentioned.
39. Link (ed.), The Papers of Woodrow Wilson, op. cit., Vol. 27, pp. 107-8.

40. CRClettersof 26 November 1909; 5 April 1916; 12 December1923. Also, lettersfrom ThomasF. Millardof 25 October 1909; and CharlesW. Eliot of 12 January1915. 41. CRC letterto PresidentCoolidge, 22 October1926. Similarly,in a speech of 2 February 1922, at the National War College in Washington,he maintainedthat Jews were the 'proprietors of the Far EasternRepublic' and the 'backbone' of the Soviet's central governmentand its machinery.Many otherexamplesare availableof Crane'seffort to equate the Bolsheviks with the Jews, who representeda threatto dominatethe world and, therefore,should be actively opposed by the US and the world's civilizations. 42. CRC letter, 21 February1931, reportingon what he had just told Arab leaders in Jerusalem. 43. CRC letters of 5 February1921, and 14 December 1934. Despite this, he could still writeWald a most friendlyletteron 8 February 1935, in which he confesses that'I have felt very definitelyout of the worldfor severalyearsand not very muchinterested in it'. In one of fate's coincidences,Cranein March1917 happened to takethe same ship from New York as Trotsky, both heading, for opposite reasons, to post-TsaristRussia; Crane frequentlydrew on his alleged direct observationsof Trotskyand his friends during this voyage (Trotsky was taken off the ship at Halifax by the British, who retainedhim for a few weeks) to buttresshis criticismsof the Bolsheviks, whom he regularlyreferredto as 'New York East Siders'.
44. Cohn, Warrantfor Genocide, op. cit., p. 126. 45. H. Bernstein, The Truth About the Protocols of Zion (1935), p.38; the author notes that

'Schiff was never an officer or chairmanof any Committeeof the B'nai B'rith'. 46. For materialon Houghton,see ibid, passim; and the press clips in the file of Henry Ford at the AmericanJewish Committeelibrary,particularly the series by N. Hapgood
in Hearst's International (June-November 1922).

47. Ibid, and, re the Crane-Leon connection,see Gottheilletter to CRC, 5 July 1913. 48. AJC files, op. cit.

CRANE'S CRUSADE FOR THE ARABS, 1919-39

55

49. Section II of the present text, the quotationregardingCrane's view of the HusseinMcMahoncorrespondence. 50. On 16 January1921, many leading Americans,includingPresidentWilson and Henry C. King, signed a press statementobjecting to Henry Ford's anti-Semiticcampaign. Crane, at the time, was in China. Upon his return,he developed a closer relationship with Ford, who reportedlysaid of him (CRC letterof 25 January1926) that 'I was the only one who really understoodhim'. Crane,in 1922, failed to get Eliot to invite the Fords for a visit, Eliot explaining, in an August 3 letter to Crane, that, among other objections,'I should feel ratherqueerinviting [the Fords]to come over to see me ... his anti-semiticcampaignhas seemed to me positivelypernicious'.Of course,in the 1920s, Hitler decoratedFord and incorporated the Protocolsinto his own writings. 51. He did so in a 1927 letterto the AmericanJewishCommitteeunderthe pressureof a law suit by the above-mentioned H. Bernstein. 52. CRC letter,2 March 1916. 53. CRC letter to SaturdayEveningPost, 18 November 1926. 54. CRC letter,2 December 1932. 55. CRC letter,21 October 1933. 56. In the 1930s, Crane frequentlygave it as his view that London and Washingtonhad already been captured by the Jews; and, that Palestine was no longer a 'British mandate'but a 'Jewish mandate'.