Hornbeck, Stanley Kuhl (1883-1966)

American diplomat and scholar who was the author of eight books and was sometimes described as an architect of American Far Eastern policy from 1928 to 1944.

Hornbeck was born on May 4, 1883 in Franklin, Massachusetts into the family of Marquis D. Hornbeck, a Methodist misister, and Lydia M. Kuhl. He spent much of his adolescence in Colorado and studied at the University of Colorado for two years, after which he transferred to the University of Denver, from which he graduated in 1903 with A.B. and Phi Beta Kappa honors. For one year he taught Latin at Golden High School in Colorado and then became the state’s first Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University in 1904-1907 (B.A. Oxford University, 1907.) From 1907 to 1909 he worked as Fellow and Instructor in Political Science at the University of Wisconsin, from which he received Ph.D. in 1909. His dissertation was published in 1910 under the title, The Most-Favored-Nation Clause in Commercial Treaties, and was recognized as the definitive work on the subject.

From 1909 to 1913 Hornbeck worked as Instructor in Chinese Government Colleges (first in Hangchow and later in Mukden) – and developed an interest and expertise in the Far East. In 1914 Hornbeck returned to the University of Wisconsin, where he taught until 1917 as Assistant Professor and Associate Professor of Political Science. In 1916, he published his first book, Contemporary Politics in the Far East, in which he warned of Japanese expansion and insisted that the USA had special moral oblications to China. However, Hornbeck did not intend to continue his successful academic career and left the university for a career in the government. In 1917, he joined the newly established Tariff Commission, but in the summer of 1918, left it to join the Army as a Captain in the Ordnance Department. ¹

Soon after joining the Army, Hornbeck received an invitation to join President Woodrow Wilson’s Inquiry – a team of experts organized to devise postwar solutions to the world’s problems, where he supervised research on Far Eastern issues. In November 1918, Hornbeck was one of the 23 members of the Inquiry chosen to accompany the American delegation to the Paris Peace Conference. In Paris in 1919, his position changed from a “general assistant” to the American delegation to the technical expert on the Far Eastern Division of the American Commission to Negotiate Peace. In the latter capacity, he represented the United States on the commission studying the disposition of Tientsin and opposed (however unsuccessfully) Japanese retention of the Chinese province of Shantung. Hornbeck’s mission in Paris ended on August 15, 1919. [[2. Stanley K. Hornbeck biography, Register of the Stanley K. Hornbeck Papers, Op. cit.; Justus D. Doenecke, "Hornbeck, Stanley Kuhl," Op. cit.; Hu Shizhang, Stanley K. Hornbeck and the Open Door Policy, 1919-1937, Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1995, pp. 45-46, 51-52; Noriko Kawamura, Turbulence in the Pacific: Japanese-U.S. Relations During World War I, Praeger Publishers, 2000, p. 136.]]

In the same month, Hornbeck was assigned as member of the 50-member US military mission to the Near East, organized under the authority of the president, known as The Harbord Commission, which was to study the relationship between the United States and Armenia following World War I. In the final report of the mission, Hornbeck was listed as “Capt. Stanley K. Hornbeck, Ordnance Department, United States Army (chief of Far Eastern Division, American Commission to Negotiate Peace).” The mission was dispatched from Paris, spent 30 days in Asia Minor and Transcaucasia and subsequently published a report on its findings. ²

In 1920, Hornbeck again briefly worked as a special expert with the Tariff Commission, but in the fall of the same year he returned to China as a private secretary for Charles R. Crane, a banker and well-known Progressive, who was appointed as US Minister to China in March of 1920. Hornbeck accompanied Crane in his extensive travels in the interior of China and soon became the ambassador’s friend, confidant and adviser. However, with the Republican change of guard in the White House in 1921, Crane was recalled to Washington, with his service as an ambassador officially completed on July 2, 1921. In June, Hornbeck accompanied Crane on the Manchurian railway to Siberia. In late June, Crane and Hornbeck arrived at Chita, which was then the capital of a short-lived “buffer” Far Eastern Republic, commonly known in Russia as DVR, by the abbreviation of its Russian name. According to Russian archival records, at Chita Hornbeck accompanied Crane to meetings with the DVR minister of foreign affairs Ignaty Yurin (the pseudonym of a Polish-born revolutionary, Ignatii Leonovich Dzevaltovsky/Ignacy Gintowt-Dziewałtowski during his time in the DVR), where Crane assured that America would take steps to end the Japanese occupation of part of the Maritime Region and Siberia. At Chita on July 2, Hornbeck parted with Crane, who managed to obtain a permission from Moscow to proceed in his railway coach through Russia “as a private citizen” en route to Prague. Hornbeck stayed back in Chita, where he met Boris Skvirsky, an assistant foreign minister of the DVR with whom he would soon resume acquaintance in the United States. From Chita, Hornbeck travelled to Vladivostok, from which he sailed to Japan. At the US Embassy in Tokyo he received messages from the US Department of State to proceed to Washington, D.C. to take part in the preparations for the forthcoming Washington Conference on Limitation of Armaments. ³

In Washington, Hornbeck became a drafting officer at the State Department’s Office of Economic Advisers and was attached as a “specialist” to its Far Eastern Division during the Washington Conference (November 12, 1921 to February 6, 1922.) At the Conference Hornbeck met Boris Skvirsky, who arrived from Chita as part of the DVR “trade delegation,” which was admitted to the USA as observers at the Conference. In 1924, Hornbeck left his position at the Department of State to join the Harvard faculty as a lecturer on the history of the Far East. In the summer of 1925, he became one of the founders of the Institute of Pacific Relations (at its founding conference in Honolulu) and in the fall of 1925 he took part in the Peking Special Conference on Tariff Autonomy. According to Russian diplomatic records, throughout the period Hornbeck continued to keep in touch with Boris Skvirsky – his Russian contact from 1921, who became Soviet unofficial representative in the USA since December 1922. In January 1928, Hornbeck resigned from Harvard faculty to accept his appointment as Chief of the Division of Far Eastern Affairs in the Department of State. ⁴

From 1928 to 1937, Hornbeck headed the Division of Far Eastern Affairs of the Department of State. Soon, he became known as the department’s leading foe of Japanese expansion in the Far East. With the Japanese taking over Manchuria and establishing the puppet state of Manchukuo, from September 1931 Hornbeck criticized moral suasion as diplomatic instrument and advocated such remedies as Western boycott of Japanese goods, an embargo on private loans to Japan – along with a defensive alliance in the Pacific and keeping the US naval superiority in the region. ⁵ At the same time, according to Russian diplomatic records, Hornbeck continued contact with Boris Skvirsky in Washington and used other channels to send certain “signals” to the Soviet leadership. For instance, on March 7 and 21, 1932, Hornbeck had lengthy discussions with New York TASS Bureau head K. Duranty, in which they discussed “a possibility of the Japanese attack against Siberia, in the course of which Hornbeck insisted that Moscow should “pay greater attention to the position taken by the USA in 1921 regarding the Japanese intervention in Siberia” and expressed his deep regret that “the Soviet government had not taken any steps to contain the Japanese in Manchuko.” He further  suggested that “at the moment the Japanese attack would be favorable for Moscow,” since “it would be better to settle these problems [the Japanese claims in Siberia] now, while Japan faces a difficult situation in Shanghai,” concluding with a rhetorical question, “Why would the United States take any steps to prevent the Japanese intervention into Siberia when Moscow is doing nothing to defend its interests in Manchuko?” ⁶

However, from 1933 Hornbeck opposed US intervention in East Asia and recommended American passivity concerning Japanese encroachments in China – on the premise that the Sino-Japanese confrontation woult allow both China and Japan to exhaust themselves. In his infrequent conversations with Skvirsky Hornbeck continued to discuss the chances of  ”a confrontation between Japan and the USSR,” in case of which “the sympathies of America would definitely be on the side of the USSR, however, America would not join either of the sides.” On the eve of Skvirsky’s departure from the USA in February 1936, Hornbeck stated his support of “cooperation between the USA, Great Britain and the USSR in the Far East.” Since September 1937, he began advocating pressure on Japan, recommending such measures for protecting American interests in the Far East, as sending US heavy cruisers. But while attending the Nine Power Treaty Conference in Brussels in November 1937,  he proposed that the great powers should guarantee Japan’s access to raw materials and markets in return for the Japanese agreement to an armistice. ⁷

From 1937 to 1944, Hornbeck served as one of the four special advisers on political questions to Secretary of State Cordell Hull. Since 1938, with the Japanese continuous encroachment on the US rights and interests in the Far East, Hornbeck became more militant in his anti-Japanese positions. This change is also reflected in the Russian records of Hornbeck’s conversations with Constantine Oumansky, a council at the Soviet Embassy in Washington and later Soviet ambassador in the USA, who substituted Skvirsky as a party in occasional confidential exchanges with Hornbeck on the situation in the Far East. For instance, in November, 1938 Oumansky reported to Moscow his conversation with Hornbeck, “Hornbeck … frankly complained to me that Hull’s concentration of attention on Latin America was not timely, that instead he should have curtailed the Japanese in Asia.” ⁸ From the summer of 1939, Alger Hiss became Hornbeck’s personal assistant.

In January 1941 Hornbeck endorsed an oil embargo of Japan and became the leading proponent for freezing Japanese funds – and an opponent of peace negotiations with Japan, but miscalculated the chances of the Japanese attack against the USA.  However, three days before the Pearl Harbor attack, he called for a preventive strike against the Japanese navy. Throughout the war, Hornbeck advocated unconditional support of the Chiang Kai-shek regime in China and opposed aid to Communist forces. ⁹ In late March 1942, Hornbeck became a permanent representative on the Junior Committee of the Joint Intelligence Committee and in November of the same year he became member of the newly created departamental Committee on Political Planning. In January 1944, he was designated Director of the State Department’s Office of Far Eastern Affairs, but the appointment turned short-lived, and on May 1, 1944 he became Special Assistant to the Secretary of State. ¹⁰ In the summer and fall of 1944, Hornbeck was a member of the American delegation to the Washington Conversations on International Peace and Security Organization (commonly known as The Dumbarton Oaks Conference), held from August 21 through October 7, 1944. That same fall Hornbeck was appointed as the new US Ambassador in Netherland ¹¹ – the post he held until 1947.

After returning home from the Netherlands in 1947, Hornbeck retired from the State Department, but still attempted to influence the US policy towards China. With the advent of the Cold War, Hornbeck became bitterly anti-Communist and supported the US military efforts in Korea and later in Vietnam, opposed US diplomatic recognition of Communist China and its admission to the United Nations. He died in Washington, D.C. on December 10, 1966. ¹²