Man of the Hour

by Jennet Conant

  “It was agreed . . .”: JBC, “A Guide to Public Education.” Detailed descriptions of Conant’s early schooling and high school years can also be found in Biebel, “Politics, Pedagogues and Statesmanship”; Jeanne Ellen Amster, “Meritocracy Ascendant”; and William M. Tuttle Jr., “James B. Conant, Pressure Groups, and the National Defense.” Roxbury Latin entrance exam: BSG, March 14, 1933, and NY, September 12, 1936, 23. JBC, “A Guide to Public Education,” foreword.

  “college was either for those . . .”: Ibid., 5.

  “Must do work in penmanship”: School report, JBCPP.

  “towhead with a Dutch cut . . .”: Boston Sunday Post, May 14, 1933.

  one of Black’s disciples: MSL, 18.

  “You don’t expect . . .”: BG, May 16, 1933.

  “prompt signs of facility”: BSG, March 14, 1933.

  “skeptical”: MSL, 17.

  “backbone”: BSG, March 14, 1933.

  “an exciting business . . .”: MSL, 16–17.

  “By the way . . .”: Ibid.

  “Why don’t you try . . .”: Ibid.

  “unusual mental power”: N. Henry Black to J. G. Hart, May 3, 1910, JBC file, Office of the Registrar, HUA.

  “My career was now clearly marked . . .”: MSL, 17.

  “GREAT!!!”: JBC 1908 diary, JBCPP. JBC to Marjorie “Midge” Conant, March 31, 1908. JBCPP.

  “I, James Bryant Conant”: JBC grade card, JBCPP. Amster, “Meritocracy Ascendant,” 28.

  “considering his extraordinary ability”: MSL, 17–18.

  “boy chemist”: N. Henry Black to TWR, May 18, 1910, JBC file, Office of the Registrar, HUA.

  “just so many hurdles . . .”: JBC, “A Guide to Public Education,” 8.

  “ballast”: BH, May 9, 1933.

  “I doubt if any schoolteacher . . .”: MSL, 15.

  “In regard to Mr. James Bryant Conant . . .”: N. Henry Black to J. G. Hart, May 3, 1910, JBC file, Office of the Registrar, HUA.

  “practically lived in the library”: Roxbury Latin, Tripod (Boston: Roxbury Latin School, June 1910), 15, JBCPP, HU.

  “God damn you,” “Lucille . . .”: BH, May 14, 1933. Tripod, February 1910, 4–5.

  “Congratulations my very dear boy . . .”: Marjorie Conant to JBC, June (undated), 1910, CFP.

  “ ‘Jim’ has been with us . . .”: Tripod, June 1910, 15.

  “headed to Cambridge”: Boston Tribune, June 4, 1910.

  “We certainly hope . . .”: Tripod, June 1910, 15.

  “star boy”: N. Henry Black to TWR, May 18, 1910, JBC file, Office of the Registrar, HUA.

  “misgivings,” “The enjoyment . . .”: MSL, 24.

  CHAPTER 3: A HARVARD MAN

  “Grottlesexers”: Millicent Bell, Marquand, 61. Cleveland Amory, The Proper Bostonians, 299.

  “other than alphabetically”: Amory, The Proper Bostonians, 297.

  “heart’s desire”: Ibid., 294.

  “aristocracy to which the sons . . .”: William Allan Neilson, Charles W. Eliot: The Man and His Beliefs (New York: Harper, 1926), 20–21.

  “solidarity . . .”: Henry Aaron Yeomans, Abbott Lawrence Lowell, 119.

  “collegiate way of living,” “King’s ‘Guide to Cambridge’ . . .”: Samuel Eliot Morison, Three Centuries of Harvard, 419.

  “mistaken laissez-faire”: Ibid., 421.

  “Gold Coast”: Ibid., 419. John T. Bethell, Harvard Observed, 22–24.

  “Divisions of wealth . . .”: As quoted in Morison, Three Centuries of Harvard, 420.

  “the aristocrats controlled the places . . .”: John Reed, “Almost Thirty,” New Republic, 332–33.

  “Mrs. Mooney’s Pleasure Palace”: BH, May 14, 1933. BDG, May 23, 1933.

  “pose as that of an outsider . . .”: Interview with John B. Fox Jr.

  “In vain are freshmen . . .”: Morison, Three Centuries of Harvard, 421.

  “a greaseball,” “He was part . . .”: Bell, Marquand, 62.

  “morning-after party”: BDG, May 23, 1933.

  Two-Beer Dash: HC, June 12, 1952.

  “a grand sense of humor”: BH, May 14, 1933.

  “club material,” “sophomore sifters”: Amory, The Proper Bostonians, 297.

  “He was brilliant . . .”: Amster, “Meritocracy Ascendant,” 35.

  “nose thumber . . .”: Bell, Marquand, 17.

  “outer gravity”: Pringle, “Profiles: Mr. President,” pt. 1, NY, September 12, 1936, 23. Amster, “Meritocracy Ascendant,” 36.

  “Smile, damn it, smile!”: JBC diary 1911–1912, JBCPP.

  “handling,” “demur and go his own way”: Merle Borrowman, “Conant, the Man,” Saturday Review of Literature 46 (September 21, 1960): 58.

  “fate of more than one . . .”: MSL, 35.

  “time-consuming operation”: JBC diary 1911–1912, JBCPP. MSL, 24.

  “FINIS! . . .”: JBC diary, April 7, 1911, JBCPP.

  “the minimum amount of work . . . ,” “only be awake . . .”: BG, May 8, 1933.

  “punched”: JBC diary 1911–1912, JBCPP.

  “nearly wrecked a half-year of work”: MSL, 24.

  “Big Punch! . . .”: JBC diary 1911–1912, JBCPP. Amster, “Meritocracy Ascendant,” 36–38.

  “beneath consideration”: Bell, Marquand, 60.

  “Not one of us was genuinely solvent . . .”: Amster, “Meritocracy Ascendant,” 38.

  “all the effort worthwhile,” “sophisticated”: MSL, 24–25.

  “class segregation,” “more than anything else . . .”: HC, January 1, 1912.

  “like [Woodrow] Wilson did . . .”: Amory, The Proper Bostonians, 307.

  “the modern spirit”: Reed, “Almost Thirty.”

  “whole collegiate future”: MSL, 23.

  “Groups are like ready-made clothing,” “C is the gentleman’s grade”: Morison, Three Centuries of Harvard, 343, 441.

  “The college . . .”: Ibid., 444.

  “concentrated,” “three-year plan”: MSL, 23.

  “grand strategy”: Ibid., 30–31.

  “primal mysteries of the universe,” Sheldon Jerome Kopperl, The Scientific Work of Theodore William Richards (PhD diss., University of Wisconsin, 1970), 16, 71.

  “Unless one aimed at a degree”: MSL, 28–31.

  “dedicated to things”: Ibid.

  “abhorred disagreement”: Ibid.

  “To him, the advancement . . .”: Ibid.

  “Only those who have seen him . . .”: JBC, “Elmer Peter Kohler, 1865–1938,” National Academy of Sciences Biographical Memoir, 1952, 270, 274, 268.

  “a series of scientific adventures”: Ibid.

  “wanted to be a physical chemist”: MSL, 32–34.

  “strategist,” “tactician”: Ibid.

  “solidity,” “commonsense judgments”: MSL, 34.

  “Swiss guide,” “mastery of technique”: JBC, “Elmer Peter Kohler,” Biographical Memoir, 274.

  “What was intended”: MSL, 32.

  “knock the puck around,” “I had to work”: Boston Sunday Post, May 14, 1933.

  “She is an angel,” “Made a fool of myself”: JBC diary 1912–1913, JBCPP.

  “She decided to tell . . . ,” “big”: Ibid.

  CHAPTER 4: NO-MAN’S-LAND

  “Men who would otherwise”: Bethell, Harvard Observed, 68–69.

  “[It] came with all the blackness”: JBC, “When May a Man Dare to Be Alone?” JBCPP.

  “pyrotechnic patriotism”: HC, May 15, 1915.

  “complete neutrality”: BG, March 6, 1915.

  “not only pro-Ally”: MSL, 41.

  “bosom friends”: JBC, “When May a Man Dare to Be Alone?” Also Tuttle, “James B. Conant,” 39.

  “despised all things German”: JBC, “Theodore William Richards, January 31, 1868–April 2, 1928,” National Academy of Sciences Biographical Memoir, Vol. 44, 1974, 251–68.

  “Such reversal of sentiment”: MSL, 41.

  “expression of personal opinion”: HC, October
13, 1914.

  “The professors were losing their minds”: Virginia Spencer Carr, Dos Passos, 34.

  “cut dead,” “When I heard someone”: MSL, 41.

  “frenzied rooter”: JBC, “When May a Man Dare to Be Alone?”

  “swing the sympathy . . .”: MSL, 42. Lusitania dead: Bethell, Harvard Observed, 70.

  “where the big scientists were”: Biebel, “Politics, Pedagogues and Statesmanship,” 20–21.

  “Nineteen-fifteen was the year . . . Organic chemists were in demand”: MSL, 42.

  “What I learned about steelmaking”: Ibid., 39.

  “committed organic chemist”: Ibid., 33.

  General Leonard Wood: A detailed description of Harvard’s First World War contribution can be found in Bethell, Harvard Observed, 72. See also Morison, Three Centuries of Harvard, 450–60.

  “Harvard ought to take the lead”: Theodore Roosevelt, “Harvard and Preparedness,” Harvard Advocate, December 8, 1915, 57–58.

  “showing more emotion . . . ,” “I adhered to the other camp”: MSL, 47.

  “less than popular”: Martin D. Saltzman, “James Bryant Conant: The Making of an Iconoclastic Chemist,” Bulletin of the History of Chemistry 28, no. 2 (2003): 86.

  “Though, of course . . .”: MSL, 43–44.

  “On paper, it was easy”: Ibid.

  “comfortable bankroll,” “meager salary”: Ibid.

  “a form of pioneering . . .”: Harvard College class of 1914, TFAR, 164.

  “cautious chlorination”: Kathryn Steen, The American Synthetic Organic Chemicals Industry: War and Politics, 1910–1930 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2014).

  “startling letter,” “By what seemed to me”: MSL, 44, 47.

  “All would have been saved”: Newark Evening News, November 27, 1916. See also Newark Evening News, November 28 and 29; BG, November 28, 1916; BG, May 26, 1933.

  “Because I had not even seen . . .”: MSL.

  “The account Loomis gave”: Ibid.

  “permanent mark”: Ibid., 44–45, 51.

  “greenness,” “move up in a year or two”: Ibid., 45.

  “The spectacle”: Ibid., 47.

  “It is a fearful thing . . . ,” “The world must be made safe”: NYT, April 3, 1917.

  “The chief reason . . . ,” “Teaching was no place”: MSL, 47.

  CHAPTER 5: THE CHEMISTS’ WAR

  “We were not soldiers . . .”: Pringle, “Profiles: Mr. President,” pt. 1, 24.

  “My friends were . . .”: MSL, 48.

  “There seems to be”: JBC to George Kelley, March 26, 1917, JBCPP. Also Amster, “Meritocracy Ascendant,” 43.

  “To wait until . . .”: MSL, 48.

  “When the United States entered”: BG, May 19, 1933.

  “A beautiful vision . . . ,” “If I can find a copy”: JBC to GTR, July 4, 1917. CFP.

  “only remotely related”: MSL, 48.

  “You’re crazy!”: Pringle, “Profiles: Mr. President,” pt. 1, 24. MSL, 48.

  “since everything German”: MSL, 49.

  “poison bombs”: NYT, April 24, 1915. For details of attack at Ypres, see Gerard J. Fitzgerald, “Chemical Warfare and Medical Response During World War I,” American Journal of Public Health 3 (April 2008): 611–12.

  “The smoke was suffocating”: Boston Sunday Globe, April 26, 1936. Also in Bethell, Harvard Observed, 70–71.

  “poison or poisonous weapons”: Fitzgerald, “Chemical Warfare and Medical Response.”

  “cynical and barbarous,” “as soldier,” “an Army . . .”: “Sir John French on the Use of Poison Gas at the Second Battle of Ypres, 15 June 1915,” in Charles F. Horne, ed., Source Records of the Great War, Vol. III (New York: National Alumni, 1923).

  Leonardo da Vinci and forerunners of chemical weapons: L. F. Haber, The Poisonous Cloud, 15. For a history of German development of chemical weapons, 22–40. Also Fitzgerald, “Chemical Warfare and Medical Response.” Description of mustard gas, effects and response: Brigadier General Alden H. Waitt, Gas Warfare, 29–33.

  “king of the battle gases”: Fitzgerald, “Chemical Warfare and Medical Response,” 617.

  “helps to cheer us up”: JBC to GTR, March 8, 1918, CFP.

  scientific steps: Haber, The Poisonous Cloud, 111. Detailed account of competing methods to produce mustard gas, 112–15.

  thirty tons of mustard gas a day: W. Lee Lewis to editors of the Chicago Chemical Bulletin, January 1919, 5.

  “It was an extraordinary performance”: Haber, The Poisonous Cloud, 168.

  “Cambridge and Harvard”: JBC to GTR, March 8, 1918, CFP.

  “brewing”: Pringle, “Profiles: Mr. President,” pt. 1, 24. Also Fitzgerald, “Chemical Warfare and Medical Response,” 9–10.

  “rather anomalous”: JBC to GTR, March 8, 1918, CFP.

  “I will have to postpone . . . ,” “I certainly envied her”: JBC to GTR, July 1918, CFP.

  “highly secret operation”: MSL, 49.

  “great American gas”: JBC, TFAR, 165.

  “Captain Lewis”: Joel A. Vilensky, Dew of Death, 3–28.

  “so sick”: Ibid.

  “The contents of the flask”: Ibid.

  “desensitize”: Ibid.

  G-34 and “methyl”: Ibid.

  “the premier of them all”: Wilder D. Bancroft, “Lewisite,” Chemical Bulletin 6 (June 1919): 154. Willoughby plant site description: General Electric Company, The National in the World War, 214–18. See also Willoughby Republic, November 18, 1918. “Our Super-Poison Gas,” NYT Magazine, April 20, 1919. BDG, May 27, 1933.

  “mousetrap”: BDG, May 27, 1933.

  “new form of rubber”: Vilensky, Dew of Death, 48.

  “A-a-ll up!”: General Electric, The National in the World War, 218.

  “Everybody respected him”: BG, May 27, 1933.

  “revolutionary changes”: General Electric, The National in the World War, 182.

  “The fields of France”: Tuttle, “James B. Conant,” 11–12.

  “disastrous attempt”: MSL, 51.

  “slightest indication”: Pringle, “Profiles: Mr. President,” pt. 1, 24.

  “unbelievable accomplishment . . .”: Cleveland Plain Dealer, November 28, 1918.

  “Here Is the Big Story”: Willoughby Republican, November 29, 1918.

  “Now We Know”: Willoughby Independent, December 5, 1918.

  “pilot production,” “no appreciable quantity”: TFAR, 165.

  “many doubts . . . open to question”: MSL, 49.

  “commercial production”: Vilensky, Dew of Death, 52.

  “ten tons a day”: NYT Magazine, April 20, 1919.

  “72 times deadlier”: Ibid. Cleveland Plain Dealer, June 15, 1919.

  “dew of death”: Vilensky, Dew of Death, 56.

  “Death Valley”: NYT, March 17 and November 29, 2012.

  “the deadliest poison ever known”: NYT, May 25, 1919; WP, May 26, 1919; Cincinnati Tribune, May 25, 1919.

  “first on the list”: Frank Parker Stockbridge, “War Inventions That Came Too Late,” Harper’s 139 (1919): 828.

  “For quantity”: W. Lee Lewis, “How the American Chemists Silence Germany,” Chemical Bulletin 6 (January 1919): 6.

  “merciful,” “One pound of chloropicrin”: Ibid.; Thomas Ian Faith, “Under a Green Sea,” 52. Also see Vilensky, Dew of Death, 58.

  “stupendous”: Lewis, “How the American Chemists Silence Germany,” 5.

  “I think poison gas”: U.S. Committee of Military Affairs, Reorganization of the Army, August 1919.

  “a gift,” “To me, the development . . .”: MSL, 49–50.

  “moral”: Ibid.

  “cruel” and “savage”: Faith, “Under a Green Sea,” 54.

  “carried wherever the wind”: Thomas Ian Faith, Behind the Gas Mask, 58.

  “chain of reasoning,” “old-fashioned,” “civilian casualties”: MSL, 49–52.

  “highly unattractive task . . . ,” “carrying the tit
le of ‘Professor’. . .”: Ibid.

  “strange adventure in applied chemistry”: TFAR, 165.

  “As head of a team . . . ,” “alone on a high pedestal,” “cherished . . .”: MSL, 51–52.

  CHAPTER 6: AIR CASTLES

  “Naturally, I was impressed . . .”: John R. Tunis, “John Harvard’s Biggest Boy,” American Magazine, October 1933, 20.

  “moved upstairs”: Ibid.

  “it already had a chemist . . .”: Amster, “Meritocracy Ascendant,” 43.

  “The army and powers that be . . .”: Lawrence V. Redman, Chemical Bulletin 6 (January 1919): 4.

  “Would you be willing to consider . . .”: Ibid.

  “so rockbound in your provinciality . . .”: Tuttle, “James B. Conant,” 15.

  “I’m going to marry a girl . . .”: Tunis, “John Harvard’s Biggest Boy.”

  “most impressive,” “very nice and simple . . . ,” “As usual . . .”: GTR diary, January 4, 1919, CFP.

  “caste system”: Tuttle, “James B. Conant,” 13.

  “waltz onto the stage”: Interview with Martha “Muffy” Henderson Coolidge.

  “splendid playing . . .”: William James to TWR, July 13, 1892, CFP.

  “highly cohesive, rarified world . . .”: Jean Strouse, Alice James: A Biography (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1980), 91.

  “unusual,” description of unorthodox upbringing: JBC, “Theodore William Richards,” National Academy of Sciences Biographical Memoir 44, 251–86.

  “Four publications . . .”: Ibid., 255.

  “The work had been strenuous . . .”: TWR, “Retrospect,” Vecko-Journalen, (undated) 1914, CFP.

  “morbid views and dark forebodings”: Martha Davis Richards to TWR, August 1, 1903.

  “nervously sensitive,” “dark prospect”: Martha Davis Thayer to TWR, July 31, 1903, CFP.

  “He was too bright . . .”: Anna Matlock Richards to MTR, January 1896, CFP.

  “vital elements,” “vital life”: MTR to Anna Matlock Richards, (undated) 1896, CFP.

  “your disease of ethics . . .”: Charles Loeser to MTR, September 6, 1894, CFP.

  “standards,” “quality”: Interview with Martha “Muffy” Henderson Coolidge.

  “stern Yankee household”: GRC diary, 1910, CFP.

  “an overwhelming sense . . .”: GRC diary, October 11, 1910.