In this installment of This Week in History, we learn how President Roosevelt’s last-ditch effort for peace came too late.
“Constructive work is at present impossible,”
cabled Joseph Grew, U.S. Ambassador to Japan. “Our efforts are concentrated on the thwarting of destructive influences.”
Ambassador Grew’s long and worried cable was sent to Secretary of State Cordell Hull on Dec. 27, 1934.
An Aim for Peace
Since the end of World War I, international relations between former belligerent states and allies alike had become strained. Treaties had been signed to alleviate the threat of war and to incentivize peace through diplomacy and economic cooperation. Although the “War to End All Wars” had ended, much of the world was still in chaos whether from trying to rebuild after the war’s destruction or trying to establish political dominance by way of civil war, such as Russia’s Civil War between the Reds and Whites (which ended fall 1922) or the Chinese Civil War between the Nationalists and the Communists (which began in 1927). The chaos of the 1920s would be topped off with the start of the Great Depression.
