Nathaniel Schmidt - Politics, Foreign & Domestic

Politics, Foreign & Domestic

Nathaniel Schmidt was a progressive Democrat, noted for his anti-imperialist and pacifist public positions. At this death, he was most remembered for his position on the need to democratize the League of Nations and the need to forgive war debts accumulated by European powers during the First World War. In the 1924 Presidential campaign, Schmidt broke from the Democratic Party and joined future New Dealers Rexford Tugwell and Felix Frankfurter in the endorsement of Wisconsin Senator Robert La Follette’s attempt to create a national third party. The endorsement specific sought to advance the “neglected needs of farmers and city workers by hand and brain and others dependent up their earnings.” With respect to foreign policy – the field of great interest to Schmidt – the Lafollette-Wheeler platform sought to “diminish the danger of war by dealing resolutely with the economic causes leading to war, by reducing armaments, by working for the outlawry of war by international agreement and by placing responsibility for making war directly on the conscience of the people.

In 1900, he delivered an address before the State Conference on Religion at All Soul’s Church in Manhattan. On the issue of war and imperialism, Schmidt noted, “hether the State seeks to expand by conquest, maintain its independence in single combat with its rivals,or guard its interests through offensive and defensive alliances, there must be war and preparations for war. But war is such a clumsy expression of tribal justice and such a fruitful source of corruption that in spite of its apparent necessity the marked individualism and the deep moral sense of the prophets of Israel could not allow it a permanent place in their political ideal.” His philosophy tended toward Christian socialism, as described in his 1903 address at the Cooper Union entitled “The Republic of Man”. The ideas in “The Republic of Man” were in circulation as early as November 1899. Schmidt gave a lecture on the “Political Ideas of the Bible, Old Testament” at the New York State Conference of Religion. The Conference followed from the National Congress of Religions and the Parliament of Religions held at the 1893 Columbian Exposition. The goal was to bridge differences between Jewish and Christian beliefs. In the 1903 lecture, Professor Schmidt noted that man as a species began in a state of cannibalism, developed into an enslaver, then reasoned itself into understanding slavery to be a wrong, and would soon see armaments escalation in the same manner. In the global initiative occurring then at The Hague, he saw – like Alfred Hayes, Jr. – the emergence of a “Parliament of mankind.” That parliament would settle, once and for all, the question of warfare. Schmidt also saw the new world institution as a means of redistributing wealth and compensation of offset the inclinations of the free market. This remained his position for the next three decades. As late as 1928, he was a support of the Institute of World Unity and its annual summer school at Eliot, Maine.

After the United States entered the First World War in 1917, Schmidt’s pacifism and anti-imperialism was less well received by the American public. His speech before the Political Equality League of Chicago dissolved into hissing after the professor turned to a critique of British imperial conscription policy. Schmidt found the policy of drafting unenfranchised peoples repugnant, and all the more problematic when justified upon matters of race. In the Chicago speech, he went as far as denying the existence of race. The crowd was partially receptive to the egalitarian aspects of the message. The hissing became more pronounced during the pacifist themes.

When Theodore Roosevelt’s growing authoritarianism prompted him to advise British Imperial officials in Cairo, Egypt to curtail the free speech rights of the Egyptian Nationalists, Professor Schmidt denounced Roosevelt’s actions as counterproductive to world peace. Before the Chicago Association, Schmidt noted there were ways to deal “. . . more tactfully with those numerous questions which go to make peace between nations than did an ex-President of the United States who spoke in Cairo the other day. The speech was rather uncalled for, I think. Now, a German would say that Mr. Roosevelt was just right. It is the German policy to lay down the law, and if necessary to lay on the lash. They would think it wholly proper that he should tell the Egyptians how to manage their affairs . . . I think the truth is that the English policy of pouring money into the country and developing it commercially, and at the same time allowing extreme freedom of speech, is the best one in the long run.

On the eve of the First World War and at a time when Turkish imperial control over its Syria provinces was weakening, Schmidt was an early proponent of an independent, secular Syrian republic. Addressing the Eastern Council of Reformed Rabbis at the Temple Emanu-El on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, the professor appealed to reformed Jews to lead the West in establishing such a secular State centered on Damascus. He cautioned that the significant Muslim and Christian Syrian populations would probably prevent the creation of a Jewish state based on a Syrian option, but a democratic multi-interest republic could succeed through the Chinese model of 1911. Critical to the success of the endeavor, said Schmidt, was the establishment of a secular education system for all.

Professor Schmidt was a supporter of the new republic of Turkey during the 1920s, when public skepticism of Turkish human rights practices was high. In a speech sponsored by the Brooklyn Ethical Culture Society, he advocated self-rule by the Turks and free international trade through the Dardanelles. Turkish abuses of ethnic and religious minorities were thought to be correctable through greater education of its peoples and elites. In October 1935, Schmidt spoke out against the Italian invasion of Ethiopia. Joining Bishop William T. Manning at the Cathedral of St. John in the Divine and a call for the United States to ‘decide whether it will join with other nations ‘in police action for the preservation of peace.’” Professor Schmidt’s subsequent address at the Society for Ethical Culture note that “. . . whatever the outcome of the situation may be, there will follow a period of moral deterioration. Whether Ethiopia is conquered in a short or in a long drawn-out war, whether by the grace of the great military powers Ethiopia is preserved at the cost of her economic integrity, or whether by her courage and strength Ethiopia maintains her independence, moral deterioration of the peoples involved is unavoidable.” Three years later, Schmidt offered an assessment of the Japanese aggression against the Republic of China in terms which connected the capacity to wage an unjust war to the disconnectedness between a people and its government.