Lewis Einstein

Lewis Einstein in 1912.

Lewis David Einstein (March 15, 1877 in New York City - December 4, 1967 in Paris, France) was an American diplomat and historian.

Biography

The son of wool magnate David L. Einstein, Lewis Einstein had two sisters: Amy, who married Joel Elias Spingarn, and Florence, who married Sir Charles Waldstein. He graduated from Columbia University in 1898, and earned a master's degree in 1899.[1]

Einstein's diplomatic career began in 1903, when he was appointed as Third Secretary of Legation at Constantinople.[2] The next year, he married Helen Ralli, a noted English beauty a number of years older than he, whose sister was married to the younger son of Francis Stonor, 4th Baron Camoys.[1] This marriage led to friction between Einstein and his father, who worried that Ralli would damage the younger Einstein's career; Ralli was twice a divorcee, and divorced women could not be received in some European courts.[1]

Einstein advanced from Second Secretary to First Secretary and then Charge d'Affairs during the Young Turk Revolution of 1908, remaining in Constantinople despite the hostilities.[3] He served as United States Ambassador to Costa Rica for one month in 1911, before his wife's ill health in the country's high altitude forced him to leave the post.[4]

In the winter 1912/13, he published anonymously the article "The Anglo-German Rivalry and the United States" in the British magazine The National Review,[5] in which he warned of a coming war between Germany and Britain, claiming that "unperceived by many Americans, the European balance of power is a political necessity which can alone sanction on the Western Hemisphere the continuance of an economic development unhandicapped by the burden of extensive armaments" and that "if ever decisive results are about to be registered of a nature calculated to upset what has for centuries been the recognized political fabric of Europe, America can remain indifferent thereto only at its own eventual cost. If it then neglects to observe that the interests of the nations crushed are likewise its own, America will be guilty of political blindness which it will later rue."

In November 1914, when the First World War was already raging, he published a second article "The War and American Policy" in the same publication. Both articles were in early 1918 reprinted as a book with a foreword by Theodore Roosevelt[6]

He returned to Constantinople in 1915 and wrote his diaries which would be later published under the name Inside Constantinople: A Diplomatist's Diary During the Dardanelles. Einstein kept the diary from the months of April to September, covering the Entente's campaign to conquer the capital city of the Ottoman Empire starting with a landing on the northern shore of the Dardanelles, which went in the history as the defeat of the Gallipoli Campaign (Gelibolu in modern Turkish).

Einstein also paid special attention to the massacres of Armenians and wrote about it extensively throughout the diary. He described the events and stated that "the policy of murder then carried out was planned in the coldest blood" in the preface of his diary.[7] Einstein blamed the cooperative pact between Germany and the Ottoman Empire as the supportive and responsible agents behind the massacres[8]

He also pointed out that the stockpiles of armaments that was used as a justification for the arrests was in fact a "myth".[9] By August 4, Einstein wrote in a diary entry that the "persecution of Armenians is assuming unprecedented proportions, and is carried out with nauseating thoroughness."[10] He kept in contact with both Enver and Talat and tried to persuade them to reverse their policy towards the Armenians. In a diary entry, he states that Talat insisted that the Armenians sided with the enemies and that Enver believed the policy was out of military necessity, but in reality both leaders feared the Armenians.[11]

In 1921, Warren Harding made him United States Ambassador to Czechoslovakia,[12] a position he held until 1930. He was also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Lewis Einstein was disinherited by his father after marrying Ralli, except for a sum of $125,000 .[3] After Einstein's death, newspapers reported that a $1,250,000 share of the elder Einstein's estate, valued in total at approximately $4,000,000,[13] had been set aside for Lewis Einstein in the event that he divorced his wife, and that it passed to his sister Lady Waldstein after he declined to do so.[1] This report was denied by Lady Waldstein, who indicated that the father's only wish regarding Lewis Einstein was to see that he was "taken care of", a means she accomplished by granting him an annual allowance of $20,000.[13] Earlier, Lewis had received nothing from the estate of his mother Caroline Einstein, who instead divided her property among Einstein's sisters and various friends among European nobility.[14]

Authorship

Einstein wrote the following books:

  • Inside Constantinople : A Diplomatist's Diary during the Dardanelles Expedition, April–September, 1915 (1918)
  • Roosevelt : His Mind in Action (1930)
  • Divided Loyalties : Americans in England during the War of Independence (1933)
  • A Diplomat Looks Back (1968)

Einstein also engaged in a longtime correspondence with Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., and in 1964 their collected letters were published in the volume The Holmes-Einstein Letters : Correspondence of Mr. Justice Holmes and Lewis Einstein 1903-1935, edited by James Bishop Peabody.

See also

Bibliography

  • Einstein, Lewis (2014) [1918]. Inside Constantinople: A Diplomatist's Diary During the Dardanelles Expedition, April-September, 1915. Introduction by Ara Sarafian. London: Gomidas Institute. ISBN 978-1-909382-11-4.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 "Lady Waldstein Claims $1,250,000; Names Herself Heir to Fund Trustees Say Was for Her Brother if He Left Wife", The New York Times, December 2, 1913, page 1.
  2. ↑ "Diplomatic Appointments - Lewis Einstein of This City Gets a Secretaryship in the Embassy at Paris", The New York Times, May 20, 1903, page 3.
  3. 1 2 "Einstein Demands", Time magazine, August 20, 1928.
  4. ↑ Marconi Transatlantic Wireless Telegraph, "Lewis Einstein in London", The New York Times, February 11, 1912, page C5.
  5. ↑ Einstein, Lewis (January 1913). "The Anglo-German Rivalry and the United States". The National Review. London: Allen Arnold. 60 (January 1913): 736–750.
  6. ↑ Einstein, Lewis (1918). Prophecy of the War (1913-1914). Preface by Theodore Roosevelt. New York, NY: Columbia University Press.
  7. ↑ Einstein 1918, p. vii.
  8. ↑ Einstein 1918, p. viii.
  9. ↑ Einstein 1918, p. 164.
  10. ↑ Einstein 1918, p. 214.
  11. ↑ Einstein 1918, p. 126.
  12. ↑ "Eight Ministers Named By Harding", The New York Times, October 5, 1921, page 14.
  13. 1 2 "Lady Waldstein Denies Agreement", The New York Times, December 3, 1913, page 13.
  14. ↑ "Nothing to Lewis Einstein" (scroll down), The New York Times, November 11, 1910, page 6.

Further reading

  • Liebmann, George W. Diplomacy between the Wars: Five Diplomats and the Shaping of the Modern World (London I. B. Tauris, 2008), covers Einstein
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