William R. Castle

Castle, William Richards, Jr. (19 June 1878-13 Oct. 1963), diplomat, was born in Honolulu, Hawaii, the son of William Richards Castle, a business executive, and Ida Beatrice Lowrey. His father was prominent in the revolution against Queen Liliuokalani in 1892 and took a treaty of annexation to Washington, only to see it refused by President Grover Cleveland. In 1902 Castle, Jr., married Margaret Farlow; they had one child.

Graduating in 1900 from Harvard, Castle became assistant dean of Harvard College, serving from 1906 until 1913. He was the author of two novels, The Green Vase (1912) and The Pillar of Sand (1914). His Hawaii, Past and Present (1913) enjoyed a wide readership, and he edited Essays in Memory of Barrett Wendell (1926). In 1915-1917 he was editor of the Harvard Graduates' Magazine.

After U.S. entry into World War I, Castle served overseas with the Red Cross. The experience brought him in touch with officials in the War and State Departments, turning his attention to government service. He entered the Department of State in 1919. There his responsibilities increased rapidly: chief of the Division of Western European Affairs, assistant secretary of state for Western Europe beginning in 1927, and under secretary in 1931-1933. He was temporary ambassador to Japan in 1930 at the time of the London Naval Conference, because the post was unfilled and Japan was one of the leading nations represented at the conference.

Castle's principal contribution to American diplomacy was his effort to create a corps of dedicated officials both in the department and abroad. Until his time in the department, ministers and ambassadors were usually political appointees, rewarded for campaign contributions. Sometimes they were sent abroad because they possessed sufficient wealth to afford the expenses of their posts. For the important diplomacy prior to, during, and after World War I, these qualifications no longer sufficed. Moreover, the increasing foreign commerce of the United States demanded skilled representation.

Castle's era in the department coincided with the passage of the Rogers Act of 1924, which combined the old diplomatic and consular services into a foreign service. Castle helped with that task. He corresponded assiduously with American representatives in Western Europe and, as under secretary, around the world, helping give them a sense of professionalism and a feeling of the department's concern for their problems. He was a member of the foreign service board that passed on appointments and promotions. Castle sought to give attention to merit but favored Ivy League graduates. He was against women as diplomats. Like other members of the board, he discriminated against consuls in favor of diplomatic personnel. Critics believed that consular appointments went to graduates of inland institutions.

In dealing with foreign policy, Castle opposed American membership in the League of Nations, believing the league dominated by the victorious powers of the war and that it could not accomplish anything serious in preserving European or world peace. He considered the league a minor addition to the traditional procedures of diplomacy.

Castle saw the principal American contribution to peace as limitation of naval arms; because of the small size of the U.S. Army, he saw no advantage to participating in league efforts to limit land forces. He favored collection of the war debts and opposed any linking, as the European nations desired, of debts to reparations owed by Germany to the former Allies. In 1931, however, when America's debtors threatened to default on the debts because the Germans were unable to pay reparations, he became the principal negotiator of the Herbert Hoover moratorium, a standstill on debts and reparations.

The single large effort of the United States to offer European and other nations a multilateral treaty to prevent war, the Kellogg-Briand Pact of 1928, Castle regarded only as a device to rid the United States of a proposal by the French foreign minister, Aristide Briand, of a bilateral treaty to renounce war between France and the United States. This Castle saw as a negative military alliance, a promise of the United States not to go to war against France in some future European crisis. Unlike his chief in 1925-1929, Secretary of State Frank B. Kellogg, he considered the multilateral treaty, apart from its special usefulness, as no more than an international kiss.

During the Manchurian crisis of 1931-1933, Castle sided with President Herbert Hoover against the efforts of Secretary of State Henry L. Stimson to bring Japan to the bar of world opinion. At instruction from the president and during Stimson's absence in Europe, Castle announced the Hoover Doctrine, which declared that the country would take no part in economic sanctions. His year as ambassador in Japan convinced him that the Japanese people and their leaders desired respect above all else as well as friendship with the United States. He was close to President Hoover, who gave Castle more attention than he gave Stimson, whom the president considered an apostle of the late Theodore Roosevelt.

Upon the coming in of the Franklin D. Roosevelt administration, Castle resigned and soon joined the Republican isolationists. He advocated a pro-Japanese policy and noninvolvement with Europe, even after the fall of France. He opposed aid to Great Britain.

In the years after the war, as in those beginning in 1933, Castle held no posts in government. He maintained a large correspondence with his former isolationist friends, notably former president Hoover. He died in Washington, D.C.

Bibliography

Castle's papers are at the Herbert Hoover Library in West Branch, Iowa, and his voluminous diary is at the Houghton Library, Harvard University. See L. Ethan Ellis, Republican Foreign Policy: 1921-33 (1968); Robert H. Ferrell, American Diplomacy in the Great Depression (1957); and Justus D. Doenecke, When the Wicked Rise (1984). An obituary is in the New York Times, 14 Oct. 1963.

Robert H. Ferrell

Citation:

Robert H. Ferrell. "Castle, William Richards, Jr.";

http://www.anb.org/articles/06/06-00094.html;

American National Biography Online Feb. 2000.

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