Intellectual preparedness: Dr. Hu Shih, Lake Forest College, and Chinese diplomacy during World War II

Abstract

The summer of 1941 was a critical juncture in WWII history. As the war intensified and threatened the security of the United States, the American people were sharply divided into two opposing political camps, one sympathetic to interventionism and the other in favor of isolationism. Frightened by the recent memory of WWI and the reality of a worldwide economic depression, many Americans believed that their country should separate itself from troubling events in the world, thereby refuting President Roosevelt’s call for America to intervene against Hitler’s aggression in Europe and Japan’s atrocities in Asia. Against this historical background, Dr. Hu Shih, Chinese ambassador to the United States, came to Lake Forest in Illinois, the center of the isolationist movement, in the summer of 1941 to deliver a speech at Lake Forest College’s Sixty-Third Annual Commencement. This article uses various archives to reveal an untold story about Dr. Hu’s speech-diplomacy during his ambassadorial career. Tied to this event was a drama conveyed via multiple layers of historical accounts and contextualized by a series of political discourses ranging from the rise of isolationism in America to China’s use of soft-power diplomacy in the international arena, in which Dr. Hu played a significant role.