28-06-2009, 11:02 PM
(This post was last modified: 29-06-2009, 12:16 AM by Carol Thompson.)
The story traces back to that international Machiavelli, Charles Richard Crane, who in 1909 was nominated by President Taft to be Minister to China. "Mr. Crane has had large experience in foreign affairs, and has been seventeen times to Russia and speaks Russian. His uncle, Prof. Williams, was Professor of Chinese at Yale and wrote a book on China." (President Taft Delighted. New York Times, Jul. 17, 1909.) However, he was recalled by Sec. Knox just as he was about to board the boat for China.
His uncle was Samuel Wells Williams (1812-1884): "Williams was born in Utica, New York and studied at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York. On graduation he was elected as a Professor of the Institute. On the June 15, 1833, and still in his twenties, he sailed for China to take charge of the printing press of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions at Guangdong, China. In 1837 he sailed on the Morrison to Japan. Officially this trip was to return some stranded Japanese sailors, but it was also an unsuccessful attempt to open Japan to American trade. On November 20, 1845 Williams married Sarah Walworth. From 1848 to 1851 Williams was the editor of The Chinese Repository, a leading Western journal published in China. In 1853 he was attached to Commodore Matthew Calbraith Perry's expedition to Japan as an official interpreter. In 1855, Williams was appointed Secretary of the United States Legation to China. During his stay in China, he wrote A Tonic Dictionary Of The Chinese Language In The Canton Dialect (英華分韻撮要) in 1856. After years of opposition from the Chinese government, Williams was instrumental in the negotiation of the Treaty of Tientsin, which provided for the toleration of both Chinese and foreign Christians. In 1860, he was appointed chargé d'affaires for the United States in Beijing. He resigned his position on October 25, 1876, 43 years to the day that he first landed at Guangzhou in 1833. Around 1875, he completed a translation of the Book of Genesis and the Gospel of Matthew into Japanese, but the manuscripts were lost in a fire before they could be published. He returned to the United States in 1877 and became the first Professor of Chinese language and Chinese literature in the United States at Yale University. Williams was nominated as president of the American Bible Society on February 3, 1881. He died on February 16, 1884. (Samuel Wells Williams. Wikipedia, accessed Jun. 28, 2009.)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Wells_Williams
Samuel W. Williams' son, Frederick Wells Williams, was a member of Wolf's Head, 1879, He was instructor in Oriental history at Yale from 1893 to 1900, and then assistant professor of modern Oriental history until retiring in 1925. He was chairman of the executive committee of the Yale Foreign Missionary Society 1902-1917, and chairman of the board of trustees of Yale-in-China since 1917. His grandson, Wayland Wells Williams, graduated from Yale in 1910.
http://mssa.library.yale.edu/obituary_re...927-28.pdf
http://mssa.library.yale.edu/obituary_re...944-45.pdf
Charles R. Crane's brother, Richard Teller Crane Jr., was a member of Book & Snake 1895.
http://mssa.library.yale.edu/obituary_record/1925_1952/1931-32.pdf
In 1911, Charles R. Crane financed the China Press at Shanghai: "Most of the money for the purchase of type and mechanical equipment for the China Press was supplied by Charles R. Crane, a Chicago manufacturer, who became a stockholder and director in the enterprise." (My Twenty Five Years In China, by John B. Powell. Macmillan, 1945.)
http://www.archive.org/stream/mytwentyfi...p_djvu.txt
In politics, Charles R. Crane was a Progressive who supported Cleveland and Taft, but opposed Roosevelt. He was one of the biggest backers of Sen. Robert LaFollete of Wisconsin, and was vice chairman of the Finance Committee in Woodrow Wilson's campaign for President. His banker friends included James B. Forgan, David R. Forgan, George F. Roberts, and Charles G. Dawes. "His father came from Paterson, N.J., and Mrs. Crane was Cornelia W. Smith of that city." (Men Who Will Raise Money. New York Times, Aug. 18, 1912.)
From Wall Street and the Bolshevik Revolution, by Antony Sutton, Chapter IV
"The best-documented example of Wall Street intervention in revolution is the operation of a New York syndicate in the Chinese revolution of 1912, which was led by Sun Yat-sen. Although the final gains of the syndicate remain unclear, the intention and role of the New York financing group are fully documented down to amounts of money, information on affiliated Chinese secret societies, and shipping lists of armaments to be purchased. The New York bankers syndicate for the Sun Yat-sen revolution included Charles B. Hill, an attorney with the law firm of Hunt, Hill & Betts. In 1912 the firm was located at 165 Broadway, New York, but in 1917 it moved to 120 Broadway (see chapter eight for the significance of this address). Charles B. Hill was director of several Westinghouse subsidiaries, including Bryant Electric, Perkins Electric Switch, and Westinghouse Lamp — all affiliated with Westinghouse Electric whose New York office was also located at 120 Broadway. Charles R. Crane, organizer of Westinghouse subsidiaries in Russia, had a known role in the first and second phases of the Bolshevik Revolution.... The work of the 1910 Hill syndicate in China is recorded in the Laurence Boothe Papers at the Hoover Institution. These papers contain over 110 related items, including letters of Sun Yat-sen to and from his American backers. In return for financial support, Sun Yat-sen promised the Hill syndicate railroad, banking, and commercial concessions in the new revolutionary China."
http://reformed-theology.org/html/books/...ter_04.htm
From Wall Street and the Bolshevik Revolution, by Antony Sutton, Chapter II
TROTSKY LEAVES NEW YORK TO COMPLETE THE REVOLUTION
Consequently, by virtue of preferential treatment for Trotsky, when the S.S. Kristianiafjord left New York on March 26, 1917, Trotsky was aboard and holding a U.S. passport — and in company with other Trotskyire revolutionaries, Wall Street financiers, American Communists, and other interesting persons, few of whom had embarked for legitimate business. This mixed bag of passengers has been described by Lincoln Steffens, the American Communist:
The passenger list was long and mysterious. Trotsky was in the steerage with a group of revolutionaries; there was a Japanese revolutionist in my cabin. There were a lot of Dutch hurrying home from Java, the only innocent people aboard. The rest were war messengers, two from Wall Street to Germany....12
Notably, Lincoln Steffens was on board en route to Russia at the specific invitation of Charles Richard Crane, a backer and a former chairman of the Democratic Party's finance committee. Charles Crane, vice president of the Crane Company, had organized the Westinghouse Company in Russia, was a member of the Root mission to Russia, and had made no fewer than twenty-three visits to Russia between 1890 and 1930. Richard Crane, his son, was confidential assistant to then Secretary of State Robert Lansing. According to the former ambassador to Germany William Dodd, Crane "did much to bring on the Kerensky revolution which gave way to Communism."13 And so Steffens' comments in his diary about conversations aboard the S.S. Kristianiafjord are highly pertinent:" . . . all agree that the revolution is in its first phase only, that it must grow. Crane and Russian radicals on the ship think we shall be in Petrograd for the re-revolution.14
Crane returned to the United States when the Bolshevik Revolution (that is, "the re-revolution") had been completed and, although a private citizen, was given firsthand reports of the progress of the Bolshevik Revolution as cables were received at the State Department. For example, one memorandum, dated December 11, 1917, is entitled "Copy of report on Maximalist uprising for Mr Crane." It originated with Maddin Summers, U.S. consul general in Moscow, and the covering letter from Summers reads in part:
I have the honor to enclose herewith a copy of same [above report] with the request that it be sent for the confidential information of Mr. Charles R. Crane. It is assumed that the Department will have no objection to Mr. Crane seeing the report ....15
In brief, the unlikely and puzzling picture that emerges is that Charles Crane, a friend and backer of Woodrow Wilson and a prominent financier and politician, had a known role in the "first" revolution and traveled to Russia in mid-1917 in company with the American Communist Lincoln Steffens, who was in touch with both Woodrow Wilson and Trotsky. The latter in turn was carrying a passport issued at the orders of Wilson and $10,000 from supposed German sources. On his return to the U.S. after the "re-revolution," Crane was granted access to official documents concerning consolidation of the Bolshevik regime: This is a pattern of interlocking — if puzzling — events that warrants further investigation and suggests, though without at this point providing evidence, some link between the financier Crane and the revolutionary Trotsky....
TROTSKY'S INTENTIONS AND OBJECTIVES
Consequently, we can derive the following sequence of events: Trotsky traveled from New York to Petrograd on a passport supplied by the intervention of Woodrow Wilson, and with the declared intention to "carry forward" the revolution. The British government was the immediate source of Trotsky's release from Canadian custody in April 1917, but there may well have been "pressures." Lincoln Steffens, an American Communist, acted as a link between Wilson and Charles R. Crane and between Crane and Trotsky. Further, while Crane had no official position, his son Richard was confidential assistant to Secretary of State Robert Lansing, and Crane senior was provided with prompt and detailed reports on the progress of the Bolshevik Revolution. Moreover, Ambassador William Dodd (U.S. ambassador to Germany in the Hitler era) said that Crane had an active role in the Kerensky phase of the revolution; the Steffens letters confirm that Crane saw the Kerensky phase as only one step in a continuing revolution.
The interesting point, however, is not so much the communication among dissimilar persons like Crane, Steffens, Trotsky, and Woodrow Wilson as the existence of at least a measure of agreement on the procedure to be followed — that is, the Provisional Government was seen as "provisional," and the "re-revolution" was to follow.
http://reformed-theology.org/html/books/...ter_02.htm
Wilson appointed Crane the Ambassador to China from 1919 to 1920. On his return, he took the Trans Siberian Railroad from Harbin, China, across Russia. "[B]y personal intervention with Lenin of the Far Eastern Republic's President, Krasnacheckoff, an ex-Chicago lawyer, permission to make the trip across Russia had been accorded." (Crane Tells of Trip With Load of Rubles. By Walter Duranty. New York Times, Aug. 12, 1921.)
Charles R. Crane was a member of the 1917 Special Diplomatic Commission, or Root Commission to Russia, service as a member of the American Section of the Paris Peace Conference, and the Inter-Allied Commission on Mandates in Turkey in 1919 that now bears his name (King-Crane Commission). Crane later helped finance the first explorations for oil in Saudi Arabia and Yemen and was instrumental in gaining the American oil concession there. (Crane Family Papers at Columbia University)
http://www.columbia.edu/cu/libraries/ind...m/word.doc
His uncle was Samuel Wells Williams (1812-1884): "Williams was born in Utica, New York and studied at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York. On graduation he was elected as a Professor of the Institute. On the June 15, 1833, and still in his twenties, he sailed for China to take charge of the printing press of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions at Guangdong, China. In 1837 he sailed on the Morrison to Japan. Officially this trip was to return some stranded Japanese sailors, but it was also an unsuccessful attempt to open Japan to American trade. On November 20, 1845 Williams married Sarah Walworth. From 1848 to 1851 Williams was the editor of The Chinese Repository, a leading Western journal published in China. In 1853 he was attached to Commodore Matthew Calbraith Perry's expedition to Japan as an official interpreter. In 1855, Williams was appointed Secretary of the United States Legation to China. During his stay in China, he wrote A Tonic Dictionary Of The Chinese Language In The Canton Dialect (英華分韻撮要) in 1856. After years of opposition from the Chinese government, Williams was instrumental in the negotiation of the Treaty of Tientsin, which provided for the toleration of both Chinese and foreign Christians. In 1860, he was appointed chargé d'affaires for the United States in Beijing. He resigned his position on October 25, 1876, 43 years to the day that he first landed at Guangzhou in 1833. Around 1875, he completed a translation of the Book of Genesis and the Gospel of Matthew into Japanese, but the manuscripts were lost in a fire before they could be published. He returned to the United States in 1877 and became the first Professor of Chinese language and Chinese literature in the United States at Yale University. Williams was nominated as president of the American Bible Society on February 3, 1881. He died on February 16, 1884. (Samuel Wells Williams. Wikipedia, accessed Jun. 28, 2009.)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Wells_Williams
Samuel W. Williams' son, Frederick Wells Williams, was a member of Wolf's Head, 1879, He was instructor in Oriental history at Yale from 1893 to 1900, and then assistant professor of modern Oriental history until retiring in 1925. He was chairman of the executive committee of the Yale Foreign Missionary Society 1902-1917, and chairman of the board of trustees of Yale-in-China since 1917. His grandson, Wayland Wells Williams, graduated from Yale in 1910.
http://mssa.library.yale.edu/obituary_re...927-28.pdf
http://mssa.library.yale.edu/obituary_re...944-45.pdf
Charles R. Crane's brother, Richard Teller Crane Jr., was a member of Book & Snake 1895.
http://mssa.library.yale.edu/obituary_record/1925_1952/1931-32.pdf
In 1911, Charles R. Crane financed the China Press at Shanghai: "Most of the money for the purchase of type and mechanical equipment for the China Press was supplied by Charles R. Crane, a Chicago manufacturer, who became a stockholder and director in the enterprise." (My Twenty Five Years In China, by John B. Powell. Macmillan, 1945.)
http://www.archive.org/stream/mytwentyfi...p_djvu.txt
In politics, Charles R. Crane was a Progressive who supported Cleveland and Taft, but opposed Roosevelt. He was one of the biggest backers of Sen. Robert LaFollete of Wisconsin, and was vice chairman of the Finance Committee in Woodrow Wilson's campaign for President. His banker friends included James B. Forgan, David R. Forgan, George F. Roberts, and Charles G. Dawes. "His father came from Paterson, N.J., and Mrs. Crane was Cornelia W. Smith of that city." (Men Who Will Raise Money. New York Times, Aug. 18, 1912.)
From Wall Street and the Bolshevik Revolution, by Antony Sutton, Chapter IV
"The best-documented example of Wall Street intervention in revolution is the operation of a New York syndicate in the Chinese revolution of 1912, which was led by Sun Yat-sen. Although the final gains of the syndicate remain unclear, the intention and role of the New York financing group are fully documented down to amounts of money, information on affiliated Chinese secret societies, and shipping lists of armaments to be purchased. The New York bankers syndicate for the Sun Yat-sen revolution included Charles B. Hill, an attorney with the law firm of Hunt, Hill & Betts. In 1912 the firm was located at 165 Broadway, New York, but in 1917 it moved to 120 Broadway (see chapter eight for the significance of this address). Charles B. Hill was director of several Westinghouse subsidiaries, including Bryant Electric, Perkins Electric Switch, and Westinghouse Lamp — all affiliated with Westinghouse Electric whose New York office was also located at 120 Broadway. Charles R. Crane, organizer of Westinghouse subsidiaries in Russia, had a known role in the first and second phases of the Bolshevik Revolution.... The work of the 1910 Hill syndicate in China is recorded in the Laurence Boothe Papers at the Hoover Institution. These papers contain over 110 related items, including letters of Sun Yat-sen to and from his American backers. In return for financial support, Sun Yat-sen promised the Hill syndicate railroad, banking, and commercial concessions in the new revolutionary China."
http://reformed-theology.org/html/books/...ter_04.htm
From Wall Street and the Bolshevik Revolution, by Antony Sutton, Chapter II
TROTSKY LEAVES NEW YORK TO COMPLETE THE REVOLUTION
Consequently, by virtue of preferential treatment for Trotsky, when the S.S. Kristianiafjord left New York on March 26, 1917, Trotsky was aboard and holding a U.S. passport — and in company with other Trotskyire revolutionaries, Wall Street financiers, American Communists, and other interesting persons, few of whom had embarked for legitimate business. This mixed bag of passengers has been described by Lincoln Steffens, the American Communist:
The passenger list was long and mysterious. Trotsky was in the steerage with a group of revolutionaries; there was a Japanese revolutionist in my cabin. There were a lot of Dutch hurrying home from Java, the only innocent people aboard. The rest were war messengers, two from Wall Street to Germany....12
Notably, Lincoln Steffens was on board en route to Russia at the specific invitation of Charles Richard Crane, a backer and a former chairman of the Democratic Party's finance committee. Charles Crane, vice president of the Crane Company, had organized the Westinghouse Company in Russia, was a member of the Root mission to Russia, and had made no fewer than twenty-three visits to Russia between 1890 and 1930. Richard Crane, his son, was confidential assistant to then Secretary of State Robert Lansing. According to the former ambassador to Germany William Dodd, Crane "did much to bring on the Kerensky revolution which gave way to Communism."13 And so Steffens' comments in his diary about conversations aboard the S.S. Kristianiafjord are highly pertinent:" . . . all agree that the revolution is in its first phase only, that it must grow. Crane and Russian radicals on the ship think we shall be in Petrograd for the re-revolution.14
Crane returned to the United States when the Bolshevik Revolution (that is, "the re-revolution") had been completed and, although a private citizen, was given firsthand reports of the progress of the Bolshevik Revolution as cables were received at the State Department. For example, one memorandum, dated December 11, 1917, is entitled "Copy of report on Maximalist uprising for Mr Crane." It originated with Maddin Summers, U.S. consul general in Moscow, and the covering letter from Summers reads in part:
I have the honor to enclose herewith a copy of same [above report] with the request that it be sent for the confidential information of Mr. Charles R. Crane. It is assumed that the Department will have no objection to Mr. Crane seeing the report ....15
In brief, the unlikely and puzzling picture that emerges is that Charles Crane, a friend and backer of Woodrow Wilson and a prominent financier and politician, had a known role in the "first" revolution and traveled to Russia in mid-1917 in company with the American Communist Lincoln Steffens, who was in touch with both Woodrow Wilson and Trotsky. The latter in turn was carrying a passport issued at the orders of Wilson and $10,000 from supposed German sources. On his return to the U.S. after the "re-revolution," Crane was granted access to official documents concerning consolidation of the Bolshevik regime: This is a pattern of interlocking — if puzzling — events that warrants further investigation and suggests, though without at this point providing evidence, some link between the financier Crane and the revolutionary Trotsky....
TROTSKY'S INTENTIONS AND OBJECTIVES
Consequently, we can derive the following sequence of events: Trotsky traveled from New York to Petrograd on a passport supplied by the intervention of Woodrow Wilson, and with the declared intention to "carry forward" the revolution. The British government was the immediate source of Trotsky's release from Canadian custody in April 1917, but there may well have been "pressures." Lincoln Steffens, an American Communist, acted as a link between Wilson and Charles R. Crane and between Crane and Trotsky. Further, while Crane had no official position, his son Richard was confidential assistant to Secretary of State Robert Lansing, and Crane senior was provided with prompt and detailed reports on the progress of the Bolshevik Revolution. Moreover, Ambassador William Dodd (U.S. ambassador to Germany in the Hitler era) said that Crane had an active role in the Kerensky phase of the revolution; the Steffens letters confirm that Crane saw the Kerensky phase as only one step in a continuing revolution.
The interesting point, however, is not so much the communication among dissimilar persons like Crane, Steffens, Trotsky, and Woodrow Wilson as the existence of at least a measure of agreement on the procedure to be followed — that is, the Provisional Government was seen as "provisional," and the "re-revolution" was to follow.
http://reformed-theology.org/html/books/...ter_02.htm
Wilson appointed Crane the Ambassador to China from 1919 to 1920. On his return, he took the Trans Siberian Railroad from Harbin, China, across Russia. "[B]y personal intervention with Lenin of the Far Eastern Republic's President, Krasnacheckoff, an ex-Chicago lawyer, permission to make the trip across Russia had been accorded." (Crane Tells of Trip With Load of Rubles. By Walter Duranty. New York Times, Aug. 12, 1921.)
Charles R. Crane was a member of the 1917 Special Diplomatic Commission, or Root Commission to Russia, service as a member of the American Section of the Paris Peace Conference, and the Inter-Allied Commission on Mandates in Turkey in 1919 that now bears his name (King-Crane Commission). Crane later helped finance the first explorations for oil in Saudi Arabia and Yemen and was instrumental in gaining the American oil concession there. (Crane Family Papers at Columbia University)
http://www.columbia.edu/cu/libraries/ind...m/word.doc