Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States, 1931: A Review

Abstract

With the publication of these volumes' the Department of State begins its task of revealing the documentary record of the most fateful decade in its history. The initial result is imposing-and formidable: more than 3,oo000 pages record its activity for the single year 1931. What the proportions will be when the documentation for 1941 is eventually reached cannot even be guessed. For detailed summaries of the subjects appearing in the series the reader is referred to the reviews written by the editors themselves and published in the Department of State Bulletin (Vol. XIV, No. 365, June 30, 1946, p. 1129; Vol. XV, No. 387, December 1, 1946, pp. 982 ff.; and ibid., No. 388, December 8, 1946, pp. 1064-1o66). This review will be confined to observations on the record of a few leading issues of the year, notably on the efforts to prevent a European economic collapse and on the evolution of American policy with respect to the Far Eastern crisis. The first of these topics fills 358 pages in Volume I, the second 716 pages in Volume III. Much of the intervening material is routine correspondence, arranged according to country. But following the documents on Manchuria comes an extended section devoted to China and dealing with issues which bear at least in part on the Manchurian problem. Attempts to prevent the European financial collapse of 1931, it will be remembered, focused on the Hoover moratorium, the original suggestion for which seems to have come from certain American bankers, notably from Governor Harrison of the New York Federal Reserve Bank and