THE NEW REPUBLIC

Herbert Croly's Insurrections

In 1909 a young intellectual, the son of two newspaper writers, published an influential political polemic titled The Promise of American Life. Herbert Croly argued that while the laissez-faire philosophy of keeping government out of the market-place held great appeal for a small-scale society, the advent of big business meant that a strong central government was needed to protect the weak. And to avoid being overtaken by special interests, government required strong leadership. Theodore Roosevelt became an early convert to Croly's "New Nationalism." Croly is also credited with inspiring Woodrow Wilson's "New Freedom." Though painfully shy, Croly, along with some like-minded colleagues, determined to start a magazine, a "journal of opinion" that would start "little insurrections" in the minds of its readers.

A Straight Fortune

Willard and Dorothy Straight became Croly's financial backers. Dorothy was a Whitney by birth and received royalties from Standard Oil. Willard was a Morgan banker who had served as a consul in China and believed in American internationalism. After reading Croly's book, the Straights decided that rather than giving money to schools or hospitals, they wanted to fund a magazine to disseminate Croly's views. The Straights purchased a townhouse in New York to house the magazine, complete with a library and a French chef for the staff's comfort. The magazine began publication in 1914 under the editorial direction of Croly; Walter Weyl, a noted muckraking journalist; and the brilliant young journalist and political philosopher Walter Lipp-mann, who by age twenty-five had already published two influential books, A Preface to Politics (1913) and Drift and Mastery (1914). Although Willard Straight died in 1918, the Straight family continued to subsidize the magazine for forty years, at an average of $100,000 a year, and never interfered with its editors' prerogatives.

A Distinguished Staff

The New Republic staff in its first years included Francis Hackett, who had created the book supplement for the Chicago Evening Post and became literary editor of the New Republic. Learned Hand, a powerful federal judge, acted as adviser and brought aboard Felix Frankfurter, a future Supreme Court justice. Croly served as editor until his death in 1930. Other early and notable contributors included Randolph Bourne, Malcolm Cowley, Edmund Wilson, and John Dewey.

Peace without Victory

The magazine's staff was largely inexperienced with foreign relations when World War I broke out. The New Republic initially took a neutral stance, which was the officially stated position of the Wilson administration. By February 1917, two months before the United States declared war, the magazine was advocating U.S. entry. Lippmann was widely credited with having won Wilson over to the cause of war. Many people believed the New Republic represented the views of the Wilson administration, and its circulation soared to 45,000, actually making a profit. It pushed for U.S. participation in the League of Nations, coining the phrase "Peace Without Victory" as the goal of the peace conference. But the editors were dismayed by the political intrigues of the Versailles Conference and eventually opposed U.S. entry to the League of Nations as a betrayal of Americans' goals in entering the war. Though its circulation dropped off after the war, the magazine continued throughout the century as one of the foremost outlets for liberal political journalism.