Ralph Townsend
Ralph Townsend was an American writer, consul and political activist noted for his opposition to the entry of the United States into World War II. He served in the foreign service as a consul stationed in Canada and China from 1931 to 1933. Shortly after returning to the United States he came to prominence through his book Ways That Are Dark: The Truth About China, a harsh critique of Chinese culture which became a widely controversial bestseller. Townsend became a prominent advocate of non-interventionism, and in the 1930s and 1940s was well known for his vocal opposition to the Roosevelt administration's foreign policy from a pro-Japanese and pro-neutrality point of view.
Following the US entry into World War II, Townsend was arrested for acting as a Japanese agent without registering under the Foreign Agents Registration Act. He pleaded guilty, admitting that he had accepted payments before the war from a propaganda organization funded by the Japanese government, but denying that he was a Japanese agent. He was sentenced to 8 months to two years in prison. While serving his sentence, Townsend was a defendant in the Great Sedition Trial. After the war, he moved to Fairfax, Virginia, where he died on January 25, 1976. His writings continue to be influential in far-right circles.
Early life, 1900–33
Ralph Townsend was born on November 27, 1900, in Raynham, North Carolina to "one of Robeson county's oldest and most prominent families." He was the son of Richard Walter Townsend and Mara Aurora McDuffie Townsend. He had four sisters and brothers, including Dallas Townsend, Sr. After graduating from Mount Hermon Preparatory School in Massachusetts, he attended Columbia University in New York City and in 1924 received his degree from Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. He worked as a journalist in San Francisco for several years before returning to New York where he taught English at Columbia University from 1927 to 1930. On November 11, 1930, he passed the foreign service test and was posted to Montreal, Canada, as vice-consul on December 20, 1930.His second assignment was to Shanghai, where he officially served as vice-consul between December 10, 1931, and January 9, 1932, though a two-month temporary detail kept him in the city long enough to witness the Shanghai Incident firsthand. After that he was stationed in Fuzhou up to his resignation from the service on March 1, 1933.
Writing on Asian affairs, 1933–37
Townsend's experiences in China formed the basis of his first book Ways That Are Dark: The Truth About China, the release of which on November 10, 1933, put Townsend in the spotlight both nationally and internationally. Billed as doing "for China what Katherine Mayo did for Mother India", Townsend's book included a controversial critique of Chinese society and culture. At a time when China was in the grip of civil strife, Townsend believed that the source of its problems lay in fundamental defects in the ethics of its people, including above all their propensity for dishonesty, lack of fixed loyalties outside of their family group, and inability to cooperate effectively with one another, as well as their greed, physical cowardice, and lack of critical thinking skills. He concludes that the "outstanding characteristics" of the Chinese people "neither enable other peoples to deal satisfactorily with them, nor enable the Chinese to deal satisfactorily with themselves" and predicts no end to chaotic conditions within the country. He also favorably contrasts what he considers Japan's sensible policies toward China with the naively "sentimentalist" ones adopted by the United States.Ways That Are Dark became a bestseller and attracted vociferous reactions from both critics and supporters. Writing for Current History, E. Francis Brown praised the book as "a welcome antidote to much that has been written in recent years and some of its conclusions might be well pondered by those who shape America's Far Eastern Policy," but by contrast the prominent sinologist Owen Lattimore denounced the work as "a general indictment of a whole race" which lacked insight, relied on second-hand accounts, and would "only convince people who are convinced already." The book itself was entangled in the political turmoil it discussed, being banned by the government of China but distributed free of charge by the government of Japan.
The Robesonian, a newspaper of Townsend's native county, reported in February 1934 that he had "aroused more glowing praise and bitter abuse for his lectures and written comments on China than any other recent speaker and writer on Far East affairs." Townsend moved from New York back to San Francisco in 1934 where he continued to write and give lectures on Asian issues as well as teaching classes at Stanford University and advertising for the San Joaquin Light and Power Corporation. Until 1941, he resided in a number of Californian cities near San Francisco.
In 1936, Townsend published his second book, Asia Answers, in which he heaps praise on what he deems to be Japan's thriving political, economic, and cultural model and its growing and positive influence in Asia. He attributes anti-Japanese sentiment in the United States to pro-communist "liberals", above all the sensationalist newspaper editors and journalists who, he believes, despise Japan due to its status as the leading capitalist nation in Asia. He condemns liberals for having already wrecked the US economy, warns of a possible communist takeover of the United States, and ends by advocating that America resist anti-Japanese warmongering and adopt a foreign policy of neutrality towards Asia.
Townsend predicted that Asia Answers might have a frosty reception from reviewers because of what he alleged to be the pro-Soviet biases of the media, and indeed, the book received negative coverage in The China Weekly Review, The Times Literary Supplement, The Times of India, and The Living Age, the last of which deemed Asia Answers a work "suspiciously similar to press releases by the Tokyo Foreign Office" which would appeal to "none except avowed Fascists". Among the book's detractors was also Pearl S. Buck who described it as "so fraught with the prejudices and personality of the writer that it is impossible to criticize any of it without involving the author's whole scheme." On the other hand, the book was received more positively in Japan and in Manchukuo, where Sadatomo Koyama, a leader in the Manchuria Youth League, declared that " understanding of China is impeccable" and strongly promoted the work. In 1937 Townsend made a trip to Japan coinciding with the release of the book's Japanese translation.
Advocate of non-interventionism, 1937–41
After returning from Japan, Townsend, who described himself as a "conservative", was highly active in writing articles, delivering lectures, and making radio broadcasts in support of the movement to keep the United States out of the conflicts in Asia and Europe. In explaining the reason for his participation in the pro-neutrality movement, Townsend stated that while serving as a consul abroad he had "learned enough of the rottenness of international politics ... to wish to do my part of peace for this country."Claiming that publishers would no longer accept anti-interventionist books, Townsend began self-publishing pamphlets. Between 1938 and 1940 he wrote a series of pamphlets which were extremely popular and widely circulated among anti-interventionists. Two of them, The High Cost of Hate and America Has No Enemies In Asia, had a circulation of at least 60,000 copies, while another, There Is No Halfway Neutrality printed 30,000 copies. The last pamphlet in the series, Seeking Foreign Trouble, attracted the attention of the German embassy in Washington, D.C. which bought and distributed more than 500 copies of it.
In his pamphlets, Townsend spoke out against boycotting products from Japan, noting that the United States conducted considerably more trade with Japan than China and arguing that peaceful trade with Japan and Nazi Germany would serve the interests of American workers and consumers. He blamed "red elements" within China for starting the Second Sino-Japanese War, but praised Japan for the "humane" manner in which its armed forces have behaved in China, believing that it was only the Soviet Union and "a powerful minority" of pro-communist Americans who are conspiring to push America to war with Japan. Townsend predicted that if the Chinese won their war with Japan, the result would be a communist takeover of China, but he dismissed the idea that Japan might launch an attack on the United States as "simply too idiotic to discuss." On Europe, he averred similarly that German conduct was largely a defensive reaction to attempts by the British and French governments to "obliterate the Germans as an entity."
Townsend became an active member of America First after its formation in 1940, and was invited to speak at America First meetings on at least two occasions. Townsend, however, would appear as a private citizen when he came before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on 8 February 1941 in opposition to the Lend-Lease Act. In a widely publicized testimony, Townsend condemned the legislation as tantamount to "a war bill" that would "assign dictatorial powers to the President" and would "make America the unmistakable aggressor against nations which have not sought objectively to molest us."
Townsend's defense of Germany and Japan led him to be labelled as an "agent" and a "propagandist" by his opponents, charges which he denied. His activism brought him to the attention of George Teeple Eggleston, editor of Scribner's Commentator, an anti-interventionist magazine based in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, and in June 1941 Townsend accepted an offer to move to Lake Geneva to serve as a contributor to the magazine. Shortly after Townsend became an assistant editor of The Herald.