Henry Cabot Lodge and the Search for an American Foreign Policy

424 Pages·1980·47.135 MB·English

by  William C. Widenor

HENRY CABOT LODGE
and Search an
the for
American
WILLIAM
C.
WIDENOR
"A marvelous blend of intellectual, political,
and diplomatic history. The style is beautiful.
—
A
very important work." Arthur S. Link
HENRY CABOT LODGE
and the Search for an
American Foreign Policy
By WILLIAM C. WIDENOR
Henry Cabot Lodge has often been depicted as an
man whose
almost one-dimensional figure, a
actions were dictated entirely by personal vindic-
tiveness and intense political partisanship. This
intellectual biography traces the evolution of
Lodge's thinking about foreign policy and relates
his political stands to his ideas. Professor Widenor
shows that Lodge held and acted on a fairly
consistent set of beliefs concerning America's role
in the world. Those beliefs, which had their
origins in Lodge's Federalist sympathies and
which the author dubs "the Rooseveltian solu-
—
tion," had a strong idealistic component a con-
clusion that invalidates the usual distinction be-
tween a "realistic" Lodge and an "idealistic"
Wilson. No student of American foreign policy,
whether "Wilsonian" or "Rooseveltian" in sym-
pathy, will be able to view either the debate over
American entry into World War or the struggle
I
over the League of Nations in quite the same light
after reading this book.
William C. Widenor teaches history at the Uni-
versity of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. This is
his first book.
Jacket illustration: Henry Cabot Lodge at his
home at Nahant, 1916. Courtesy of the Massa-
chusetts Historical Society.
Jacket design by William Snyder
BOSTON
PUBLIC
LIBI^RY
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in 2017 with funding from
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https://archive.org/details/henrycabotlodgetOOwide
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Henry Cabot Lodge
and the Search for an
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WILLIAM WIDENOR
C.
Henry Cabot Lodge
and the Search for an
American
Foreign Policy
University of California Press
BERKELEY LOS ANGELES LONDON
—
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Widenor, William C
Henry Cabot Lodge and the search for an American
foreign policy.
1. Lodge, Henry Cabot, 1850-1924. 2. United
—
States Foreign relations 1865-1921. I. Title.
E664.L7W45 327.73 78-62863
ISBN 0-520-03778-2
University of California Press
Berkeley and Los Angeles, California
University of California Press, Ltd.
London, England
©
1980 by
The Regents of the University of California
Printed in the United States of America
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