William
Barbour was born in Monmouth County, New Jersey, on 31st July, 1888.
He studied at Princeton University and was amateur heavyweight boxing
champion of the United States (1910-1911).
A
member a member of the Republican Party,
Barbour served as mayor of Rumson (1923-28) before being elected to
the Senate in December 1931.
On 8th February, 1934,
Gerald
Nye submitted
a Senate Resolution calling for an investigation of the munitions
industry by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee under Key
Pittman of Nevada. Pittman disliked the idea and the resolution
was referred to the Military Affairs Committee. It was eventually
combined with one introduced earlier by Arthur
H. Vandenberg.
The Military Affairs Committee
accepted the proposal and as well as Nye and Vandenberg, the Munitions
Investigating Committee included Barbour, James
P. Pope of Idaho, Joel B. Clark of
Missouri, Homer T. Bone of Washington,
and Walter F. George of Georgia. John
T. Flynn, a writer with the New
Republic magazine, was appointed as an advisor and
Alger
Hiss as the committee's
legal assistant.
Public hearings before
the Munitions Investigating Committee began on 4th September, 1934.
In the reports published by the committee it was claimed that there
was
a strong link between the American government's decision to enter
the First World War and the lobbying of the
the munitions industry. The
committee was also highly critical of the nation's bankers. In a speech
in 1936 Nye argued that "the record of facts makes it altogether
fair to say that these bankers were in the heart and
center of a system that made our going to war inevitable".
Barbour was an unsuccessful
candidate for re-election in 1936 but returned to the Senate in 1940.
William
Barbour died in Washington
on 22nd November, 1943.
(1)
Gerald
Nye,
speech reported in the New
York Times (10th February, 1936)
It would not be fair to say that the House of Morgan took us to war
to save their investment in the Allies, but the record of facts makes
it altogether fair to say that these bankers were in the heart and
center of a system that made our going to war inevitable. We started
in 1914 with a neutrality policy which permitted the sale of arms
and munitions to belligerents, but which forbad loans to belligerents.
Then, in the name
of our own business welfare. President Wilson permitted the
policy to be stretched to the extent of permitting the house of Morgan
to supply the credit needs of the Allies. After this error of neutrality,
the road to war was paved and greased for us.
(2)
Report on Activities and Sales of Munition Companies (April,
1936)
Almost without exception, the American munitions companies investigated
have at times resorted to such unusual approaches, questionable favors
and commissions, and methods of 'doing the needful' as to constitute,
in effect,
a form of bribery of foreign governmental officials or of their close
friends in order to secure business. These business methods carried
within themselves the seeds of disturbance to the peace and stability
of those nations in which they
take place.
While the
evidence before this committee does not show that wars have been started
solely because of the activities of munitions makers and their agents,
it is also true that wars rarely have one single cause, and the committee
finds it to be against the peace of the world for selfishly interested
organizations to be left free to goad and frighten nations into military
activity.
(3)
Joel
B. Clark, introduction to the Munitions
Industry: Report on Existing Legislation (5th June, 1936)
The Committee wishes to point out most definitely that its study of
events resulting from the then existing neutrality legislation, or
the lack of it, is
in no way a criticism, direct or implied, of the sincere devotion
of the then President, Woodrow Wilson, to the high causes of peace
and democracy. Like other leaders in government, business and finance,
he had watched the growth of militarism in the pre-war years. Militarism
meant the alliance of the military with powerful economic groups to
secure appropriations on the one hand for a constantly increasing
military and naval establishment, and on the other hand, the constant
threat of the use of that swollen military establishment in behalf
of the economic interests at home and abroad of the industrialists
supporting it. President Wilson was personally impelled by the highest
motives and the most profound convictions as to the justice of the
cause of our country and was devoted to peace. He was caught up in
a situation created largely by the profit-making interests in the
United States, and such interests spread to nearly everybody in the
country. It seemed necessary to the prosperity of our people that
their markets in Europe remain unimpaired. President Wilson, himself,
stated that he realized that the economic rivalries of European nations
had played their part in bringing on the war in 1914.
(4)
Gerald
Nye,
speech in Congress (6th June, 1936)
Loans extended to the Allies in 1915 and 1916, led to a very considerable
war boom and inflation. This boom extended beyond munitions to auxiliary
supplies and equipment as well as to agricultural products. The nature
of such a war-boom inflation is that, like all inflations, an administration
is almost powerless to check it, once the movement is well started.
Our foreign policy then is seriously affected by it, even to the extent
of making impossible the alteration of our foreign policy in such
a way as to protect our neutral rights.
(5)
Gerald
Nye, speech in Congress
(July, 1939)
No member of the Munitions Committee to my knowledge has ever contended
that it was munitions makers who took us to war. But that committee
and its members have said again and again, that it was war trade and
the war boom, shared in by many more than munitions makers, that played
the primary part in moving the United States into a war.
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