(First edition. Essays on John Donne, Cotton Mather, Sir T...)
First edition. Essays on John Donne, Cotton Mather, Sir Thomas Browne, Emily Dickinson, Montague James, Nathaniel Hawthorne, A.C. Benson, Paul Elmer More, and T.S. Eliot. xii, 202 pages. cloth, dust jacket.. 8vo..
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Warren Robinson Austin was born on November 12, 1877 in Highgate Center, Vermont, United States. He was the son of Chauncey Goodrich Austin, a lawyer, and of Anne Mathilda Robinson.
He grew up in a typical small-town, middle-class environment.
He attended local schools and Bakersfield's Brigham Academy and also studied in Quebec to obtain fluency in French. He graduated from the University of Vermont in 1899. He then studied law with his father.
Warren Austin read law in his father's office and was admitted to the Vermont bar in 1902. He joined his father's legal practice in St. Albans, where over the next few years his two brothers also became partners. Austin joined the Republican party and in 1904 was elected state's attorney for Franklin County for a two-year term. In 1906, the Second Circuit of the United States Court admitted him to practice, and in 1907 he was named a United States commissioner.
His political reputation grew with his election as chairman of the Republican State Convention in 1908 and as mayor of St. Albans in 1909.
In 1912, following his losing bid for the Republican nomination for Congress, he turned his attention back to law. He was admitted to practice before the Supreme Court in 1914. In 1916, Austin accepted a position with the American International Corporation, a new venture backed by the National City Bank of New York. He represented the company in Peking, China, where he negotiated loans with the Chinese government for railroad and canal-engineering projects. Austin remained in China until mid-1917, when he severed connections with the New York-based business and returned to Vermont.
Ambitious and hardworking, Austin settled in Burlington, the state's largest city, rather than in St. Albans. For the next twelve years, he successfully built his legal business while concurrently pursuing an active life in community affairs and Republican state politics. He did not run for an elective office again until 1930, by which time he had become one of Vermont's best-known attorneys and Republican workers.
In December 1930, U. S. Senator Frank L. Greene died with four years left in his term of office. Austin decided to run for the vacant seat in a special election held in March 1931. He defeated Frank C. Partridge in a close, hard-fought primary election and handily won over Democrat Stephen M. Driscoll in the general election.
After America's entry into World War II, Austin called for planning for the postwar world. The Roosevelt administration sought his support in its bipartisan approach to postwar planning. Secretary of State Cordell Hull asked Austin to become a charter member of the State Department's congressional foreign policy advisory group when it was formed in 1942; he later was a key member of the Committee of Eight, composed of prominent senators who favored some form of postwar international organization.
In 1943, Austin played an important role in directing the Republican party toward acceptance of an international organization plank in its 1944 platform. In addition, he supported administration internationalist actions that included the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration, the Dumbarton Oaks recommendation for a postwar international organization, and the 1946 British loan. In spite of staunch membership in the conservative coalition, Austin's bipartisan internationalist position brought him into conflict with the Senate Republican isolationist bloc. In December 1942, that group purged him from the informal assistant minority leader's position he had held since 1933, and he did not receive the Senate Foreign Relations Committee assignment he wished until February 1944.
On June 5, 1946, President Harry S. Truman selected Austin as the first United States ambassador to the United Nations. The nomination was the capstone of Austin's career. He carried into the position his moralistic and idealistic premises of how the world organization could be used in the conduct of foreign relations. He assumed the United Nations was an arena for the dissemination of truth. He saw nationalistic views brought together there under a system of moral and legal rules and restraints where world public opinion scrutinized each nation's foreign policy. Often, however, the United Nations mission was bypassed in major administration policy decisions. These events placed Austin's universal, idealistic views in an awkward position. Yet he accepted the American hard-line stance by rationalizing the tactics of containment as a series of short-range alternatives that supported the long-range goals of the United Nations.
Through the turbulent events of the cold-war years, the Greek-Turkish crisis and European economic situation that led to the Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan, the Palestine imbroglio of 1947 and 1948, the 1948 Berlin blockade, and the Korean War of 1950-1953--Austin spoke for American policy at the United Nations but had little influence on policy decisions. While ambassador, Austin never had a close working relationship with the secretaries of state who served in the Truman administration: James F. Byrnes, George C. Marshall, and Dean G. Acheson.
Yet all three appreciated the important relationship between America's continued support (although it was at times only rhetorical) for the United Nations as a part of the nation's foreign policy. They also appreciated Austin as an important link between the United States and the United Nations. With his sincere, cooperationist outlook, he eloquently carried out the role of American spokesman.
Between 1946 and 1953, Austin hardened his attitude toward the Soviet Union and its allies. His contact through the United Nations with the continued intransigence of the Soviets coupled with the administration's hard-line attitude brought him to this view. The early months of the Korean conflict were particularly influential. Both the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China sorely taxed Austin. After early 1951, he appeared quite pessimistic regarding any modus vivendi with the Communists. Yet he never lost faith in the importance and goals of the United Nations.
At the close of the Truman administration in January 1953, Austin retired to Burlington, where he spent many hours pursuing his lifelong leisure-time activity as an amateur arboriculturist. His backyard was filled with various strains of apple trees. He also retained his interest in foreign affairs. As a symbol of his conversion to hard-line anti-Communism, he accepted the position of honorary chairman of the Committee of One Million, organized to keep the People's Republic of China out of the United Nations.
Warren Austin received honorary degrees from Columbia University, Norwich University, Bates College, Princeton University, Lafayette College, the University of Vermont, Dartmouth College, Boston University, American University, the University of the State of New York, and the University of Santo Domingo. He is memorialized in the Vermont State House Hall of Inscriptions.
(First edition. Essays on John Donne, Cotton Mather, Sir T...)
He believed that America had a democratic, moralistic, capitalistic mission to the world. A flexible foreign policy should be followed; independence did not mean isolation. He voted against the neutrality laws of that era and advocated a buildup of the nation's defenses.
Member of the American Bar Association, member of the Vermont Bar Association, member of the American Judicature Society, member of the Loyal Legion, member of the Sons of the American Revolution, member of the Society of the Cincinnati, member of the Freemasons, member of the Shriners, member of The Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks, member of the Order of Owls, member of the Independent Order of Odd Fellows, member of the Rotary Club, member of the the Kappa Sigma fraternity.
While at the university, Warren Austin met Mildred Marie Lucas, the daughter of a trainmaster. They were married on June 26, 1901, and had two children.
