Oswald
Garrison Villard was born in Germany
on 13th March, 1872. His father was Henry
Villard, the journalist and successful businessman and his mother,
Helen Frances Garrison, was the daughter
of the anti-slavery campaigner, William
Lloyd Garrison.
After being educated at private schools and Harvard
University, Villard joined the staff of his father's newspaper,
the New York Evening Post. He became
the owner of the newspaper and The Nation
when Henry Villard died in 1900.
Villard held radical political opinions and gave his support to women's
suffrage, trade union law reform and
equal rights for African Americans. Villard and his mother, were both
founder members of the National Association
for the Advancement of Coloured People (NAACP).
A pacifist, he opposed America's participation
in the First World War. This upset his patriotic
readers and advertisers and Villard was forced to sell the New
York Evening Post. However, he retained The
Nation and continued to use this as the personal organ of
his views.
After the war The Nation faithfully
supported radical causes. Although it only had a circulation of around
25,000 but it had a tremendous influence in political and intellectual
circles. In 1932 Villard supported Franklin
D. Roosevelt and his New Deal.
Villard retained his pacifist views and refused to support rearmament
in the 1930s and aid to Allies during the Second
World War. His unwillingness to change his mind after Pearl
Harbor led to his isolation from mainstream politics. Oswald Garrison
Villard died on 1st October, 1949.
(1)
Oswald Garrison Villard wrote a letter of protest to Booker
T. Washington about speeches he had been making in Europe about
African American civil rights in the United States (January, 1910)
From
my point of view your philosophy is wrong. You are keeping silent
about evils in regard to which you should speak out, and you are not
helping the race by portraying all the conditions as favorable. If
my grandfather had gone to Europe, say in 1850, and dwelt in his speeches
on slavery upon certain encouraging features of it, such as the growing
anger and unrest of the poor whites, and stated the number of voluntary
liberations and number of escapes to Canada, as evidence that the
institution was improving, he never would have accomplished what he
did, and he would have hurt, not helped, the cause of freedom. It
seems to me that the parallel precisely affects your case. It certainly
cannot be unknown to you that a greater and greater percentage of
the intellectual colored people are turning from you, and becoming
your opponents, and with them a number of white people as well.
(2)
Booker
T. Washington
reply to Oswald
Garrison Villard about
his lecture tour of Europe (January, 1910)
There is little parallel between conditions in your grandfather had
to confront and those facing us now. Your grandfather faced a great
evil which was to be destroyed. Ours is a work of construction rather
than a work of destruction. My effort in Europe was to show to the
people that the work of your grandfather was not wasted and that the
progress the Negro has made in America justified the words and work
of your grandfather. You of course, labour under the disadvantage
of not knowing as much about the life of the Negro race as if you
were a member of the race yourself.
(3)
Oswald Garrison Villard, Preparedness is Militarism (July,
1916)
American sanity and intelligence
and wisdom
ought to see to it, when the war excitement is over and news of preparedness
is no longer featured
in the press as once were
the free-silver fallacy and the battles against
the trusts and the railroads, that their
government face the other way. Indeed,
for right-thinking people this is the time
to let the time-serving and compromising
administration in Washington know that
they expect of it the highest "preparedness"
in the form of a readiness to take the lead
at the peace conference in proposing international
disarmament or in calling a conference
for this purpose simultaneously with
the peace conference. As Mr. Lansing and
Mr. Wilson rise to this opportunity, so will
their final standing be at the bar of history.
It is idle to say that
there are international problems beyond solution; that there is no
way out of the present low estate of the world; that its animal passions
cannot be checked. Behold in Paris there are now sitting the representatives
of eight nation who are legislating, not merely as to measures for
carrying on the war against the Central Powers but as to such questions
as a joint-tariff system, low telephone and telegraph tolls, an international
statute as to the licensing
of corporations, as to bankruptcies, yes, even as to the losses resulting
from the theft of bonds, and as to the false designation of merchandise.
Now, if these great nations
can take time and thought in the middle of a war they believe to be
one of life and death to legislate together as to these things, who
shall say that after this frightful bloodshed they cannot be led by
the great American republic to legislate on other far more vital themes?
He who doubts belongs in the class with those who despair of humanity;
who see nothing to be gained by tackling world-old evils because they
are old; who bow down before brute passion and would touch neither
the social evil, nor any social evil, nor smallpox, nor cancer, nor
crime, or ignorance, nor poverty, because of their age.
Against the god of might;
against the god of force; against the policy of murder of millions
by millions, there will be American citizens to protest as long as
there are stars in their courses. Against every preparation for war
men henceforth will rise to say no, even with their backs to the wall
and rifles in front of them. For there is no slavery in the world
like this to arms, none that today so checks the growth of liberty,
of democracy, of the coming of the kingdom of heaven on earth. They
will bear readily and willingly imputations of fanciful, unpractical
idealism, of lack of patriotism; only it must never be said of them
that they were unfaithful to their faith or that they were ever at
peace with militarism, or that they were afraid to die for their ideals,
or that they were traitors to the Prince of Peace in thought or deed.
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