John F. Melby
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John Fremont Melby (July 1, 1913 – December 18, 1992) was a United States diplomat, who served in the
Soviet Union The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national ...
from 1943 to 1945 and in
China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population exceeding 1.4 billion, slightly ahead of India. China spans the equivalent of five time zones and ...
from 1945 to 1948. He held other positions with the
Department of State The United States Department of State (DOS), or State Department, is an executive department of the U.S. federal government responsible for the country's foreign policy and relations. Equivalent to the ministry of foreign affairs of other nati ...
until 1953, when he was dismissed as a security risk because of his long and intimate association with the playwright
Lillian Hellman Lillian Florence Hellman (June 20, 1905 – June 30, 1984) was an American playwright, prose writer, memoirist and screenwriter known for her success on Broadway, as well as her communist sympathies and political activism. She was blacklisted aft ...
, who was accused of communist ties. He later became an academic specializing in Far Eastern affairs.


Early years

Melby was born in
Portland, Oregon Portland (, ) is a port city in the Pacific Northwest and the largest city in the U.S. state of Oregon. Situated at the confluence of the Willamette and Columbia rivers, Portland is the county seat of Multnomah County, the most populous co ...
, on July 1, 1913 to Harry Charles Melby and Helen Fremont. He moved several times in his childhood. He spent part of it in Brazil, where he became fluent in Portuguese and French. He attended Bloomington High School in
Bloomington, Illinois Bloomington is a city and the county seat of McLean County, Illinois, United States. It is adjacent to the town of Normal, and is the more populous of the two principal municipalities of the Bloomington–Normal metropolitan area. Bloomington ...
, and was graduated from
Illinois Wesleyan University Illinois ( ) is a state in the Midwestern United States. Its largest metropolitan areas include the Chicago metropolitan area, and the Metro East section, of Greater St. Louis. Other smaller metropolitan areas include, Peoria and Rockfor ...
in 1934.Robert P. Newman, ''The Cold War Romance of Lillian Hellman and John Melby'' (University of North Carolina Press, 1989), 22 He received a master's degree and a doctorate in political science at the
University of Chicago The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, U of C, or UChi) is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Its main campus is located in Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood. The University of Chicago is consistently ranked among the b ...
.''New York Times''
Richard Perez-Pena, "John Melby, 79, Who Tied Ouster As a Diplomat to Hellman Affair," December 27, 1992
accessed October 11, 2011


Service in the State Department

Melby joined the Foreign Service in 1937 and that year took up his first State Department assignment in Juarez, Mexico. In 1938, he married Florence Cathcart, whom he met across the border in
El Paso, Texas El Paso (; "the pass") is a city in and the county seat, seat of El Paso County, Texas, El Paso County in the western corner of the U.S. state of Texas. The 2020 population of the city from the United States Census Bureau, U.S. Census Bureau w ...
. His next posting was
Caracas Caracas (, ), officially Santiago de León de Caracas, abbreviated as CCS, is the capital and largest city of Venezuela, and the center of the Metropolitan Region of Caracas (or Greater Caracas). Caracas is located along the Guaire River in the ...
, Venezuela, where he served as vice consul from 1939 to 1941. In 1943 he was assigned to the American Embassy in Moscow, where his rank did not allow him to bring his family. He and his wife, the parents of two boys, grew apart during his absence in Moscow and never lived together again. In 1944, Melby met the playwright,
Lillian Hellman Lillian Florence Hellman (June 20, 1905 – June 30, 1984) was an American playwright, prose writer, memoirist and screenwriter known for her success on Broadway, as well as her communist sympathies and political activism. She was blacklisted aft ...
, whom President
Roosevelt Roosevelt may refer to: *Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919), 26th U.S. president * Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945), 32nd U.S. president Businesses and organisations * Roosevelt Hotel (disambiguation) * Roosevelt & Son, a merchant bank * Rooseve ...
had sent on a cultural good-will mission to Moscow. They were equally committed to the U.S.-Soviet alliance of World War II. They began an affair that lasted several years. In 1945, he attended the founding conference of the United Nations in San Francisco as liaison officer for the Soviet delegation, handling details ranging from transportation to translations. He described it as the work of "nursemaid, office boy, and messenger." That same year, at the suggestion of U.S. Ambassador to the Soviet Union
Averell Harriman William Averell Harriman (November 15, 1891July 26, 1986), better known as Averell Harriman, was an American Democratic politician, businessman, and diplomat. The son of railroad baron E. H. Harriman, he served as Secretary of Commerce un ...
, he was sent to China, where
Chiang Kai-shek Chiang Kai-shek (31 October 1887 – 5 April 1975), also known as Chiang Chung-cheng and Jiang Jieshi, was a Chinese Nationalist politician, revolutionary, and military leader who served as the leader of the Republic of China (ROC) from 1928 ...
's Nationalist Government was fighting
Mao Zedong Mao Zedong pronounced ; also romanised traditionally as Mao Tse-tung. (26 December 1893 – 9 September 1976), also known as Chairman Mao, was a Chinese communist revolutionary who was the founder of the People's Republic of China (PRC) ...
's army, in order to monitor the role of the Soviets in China.David Halberstam, ''The Coldest Winter: America and the Korean War'', (Hyperion, 2007), 319
available online
accessed October 10, 2011
He was second secretary and vice consul in
Chungking Chongqing ( or ; ; Sichuanese pronunciation: , Standard Mandarin pronunciation: ), alternately romanized as Chungking (), is a municipality in Southwest China. The official abbreviation of the city, "" (), was approved by the State Counc ...
in 1944-1945 and then in the embassy's new location in
Nanking Nanjing (; , Mandarin pronunciation: ), alternately romanized as Nanking, is the capital of Jiangsu province of the People's Republic of China. It is a sub-provincial city, a megacity, and the second largest city in the East China region. T ...
in 1946-7, and then second secretary and consul in Nanking in 1947-48. In December 1945, he recorded his assessment of the two sides in his diary: He faulted U.S. policy in his diary in June 1948 as the communist victory neared: "All the power of the United States will not stem the tides of Asia, but all the wisdom of which we are capable might conceivably make those tides a little more friendly to us than they are now." Melby and Hellman found their political views diverging during Melby's years in China. He came to advocate containment of Communism while she was unwilling to hear criticism of the Soviet Union. They became, in one historian's view, "political strangers, occasional lovers, and mostly friends." Her support for Henry Wallace in the 1948 campaign proved an especially sore point. When Wallace blamed the Soviet takeover of Czechoslovakia on U.S. policy, Melby wrote Hellman: In March 1948, Melby delivered an address the National Catholic Educational Conference of China in Shanghai, in which he called communism an "iron helmet over the minds of men" and which his hosts called "the strongest public condemnation of communism by an American diplomat so far uttered by an American diplomat in China." Melby was recalled to Washington and left China on December 15, 1948, as the communists were winning control. On instructions from his State Department superiors, he produced an analysis of the communist revolution in China and, with
Charles Yost Charles Woodruff Yost (November 6, 1907 – May 21, 1981) was a career U.S. Ambassador who was assigned as his country's representative to the United Nations from 1969 to 1971. Biography Yost was born in Watertown, New York. He attended t ...
became a principal author of an influential study known as the ''China White Paper'' (1949).Newman, ''Cold War Romance'', 138-9 He held the view that Chiang and the Nationalists were responsible for the communist victory in China and privately criticized those who shared this belief, but surrendered to the interpretation of the pro-Chiang
China Lobby In American politics, the China lobby consisted of advocacy groups calling for American support for the Republic of China during the period from the 1930s until US recognition of the People's Republic of China in 1979, and then calling for clo ...
in the U.S. and blamed the communists' success on the U.S. government and especially, on the State Department's
China Hands The term ''China Hand'' originally referred to 19th-century merchants in the treaty ports of China, but came to be used for anyone with expert knowledge of the language, culture, and people of China. In 1940s America, the term ''China Hands'' came ...
. Because Melby's role in authoring the ''White Paper'' was not publicized, he escaped the criticism it received from the China Lobby. In 1950, he headed a sixteen-person mission, the Joint State-Defense Military Assistance Mission to Southeast Asia,Penn Archives
Penn Biographies: John F. Melby (1913-1992)
accessed October 11, 2011
also known as the Melby-Erskine mission, to study the military capabilities and requirements of Southeast Asian nations in light of the threat of communist advances. It was one of the first American missions to
Vietnam Vietnam or Viet Nam ( vi, Việt Nam, ), officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam,., group="n" is a country in Southeast Asia, at the eastern edge of mainland Southeast Asia, with an area of and population of 96 million, making i ...
to assess the struggle of communist insurgents against French colonial rule. Melby's assessment of French efforts was very pessimistic and he advised major changes in the French approach. He nevertheless recommended providing the military aid France was requesting. His policy recommendations were neither heeded nor communicated to the French. His State Department positions in these years were assistant chief of the division of Philippine Affairs in 1949, officer in charge of Philippine Affairs in 1949-50, and assistant to assistant secretary of state for Far Eastern Affairs from 1950 to 1953. In January 1951, following his divorce from his first wife, Melby married Hilda Hordern, a State Department employee whom he had first met in China in 1947, when she was secretary to Ambassador
John Leighton Stuart John Leighton Stuart (; June 24, 1876 – September 19, 1962) was a missionary educator, the first President of Yenching University and later United States ambassador to China. He was a towering figure in U.S.-Chinese relations in the first half o ...
.


Dismissal and security clearance

In the early 1950s, at the height of
anti-communist Anti-communism is Political movement, political and Ideology, ideological opposition to communism. Organized anti-communism developed after the 1917 October Revolution in the Russian Empire, and it reached global dimensions during the Cold War, w ...
fervor in the United States, the State Department investigated whether Melby posed a security risk. The investigation began in September 1951, a week after ex-communist
Martin Berkeley Martin Berkeley (August 21, 1904 − May 6, 1979) was a Hollywood and television screenwriter who collaborated with the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) in the 1950s by naming dozens of Hollywood artists as Communists or Communist s ...
told the
House Un-American Activities Committee The House Committee on Un-American Activities (HCUA), popularly dubbed the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), was an investigative committee of the United States House of Representatives, created in 1938 to investigate alleged disloy ...
(HUAC) that Hellman had attended an organizational meeting of the Communist Party in 1937. Initially, the issues Melby was asked to address were minor. Then in April 1952, the department stated its one formal charge against Melby: "that during the period 1945 to date, you have maintained an association with one, Lillian Hellman, reliably reported to be a member of the Communist Party." Based on unverified testimony from informants that she was a member of the Communist Party, along with her participation in many communist-front organizations and left-wing advocacy groups, Melby's suitability for government service was questioned, and when Melby appeared before the department's
Loyalty Security Board Loyalty, in general use, is a devotion and faithfulness to a nation, cause, philosophy, country, group, or person. Philosophers disagree on what can be an object of loyalty, as some argue that loyalty is strictly interpersonal and only another ...
, he was not allowed to contest Hellman's communist affiliation or learn the identity of those who informed against her, only his understanding of her politics and the nature of his relationship with her, including detailed discussion of their occasional renewal of their physical relationship. He never promised to avoid contact with Hellman, but allowed that he had no plans to renew their friendship. In the course of a series of appeals, Hellman testified before the Loyalty Security Board on his behalf. She offered to answer questions, but the board was not prepared to hear testimony about her politics, which it had already determined on the basis of an FBI investigation. She was only allowed to describe her relationship with Melby. She testified that she had many longstanding friendships with people of different political views and that political sympathy was not a part of those relationships. She described how her relationship with Melby changed over time and how their sexual relationship was briefly renewed in 1950 after a long hiatus: "The relationship obviously at this point was neither one thing nor the other: it was neither over nor was it not over." In summary, she said that: After seven hearings, the State Department dismissed him on April 22, 1953. As was its practice, the loyalty board gave no reason for its decision. The entire process went unnoticed by the press. Melby later credited his good relations with the press: "I think among newspapermen there was a kind of conspiracy to protect me." In December 1960, as the Kennedy Administration took shape, Melby tried to have his security clearance restored, encouraged by the appointment of
Dean Rusk David Dean Rusk (February 9, 1909December 20, 1994) was the United States Secretary of State from 1961 to 1969 under presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson, the second-longest serving Secretary of State after Cordell Hull from the F ...
, who was familiar with his State Department work, as the new Secretary of State. His longtime friend Averell Harriman was becoming ambassador-at-large.
Robert F. Kennedy Robert Francis Kennedy (November 20, 1925June 6, 1968), also known by his initials RFK and by the nickname Bobby, was an American lawyer and politician who served as the 64th United States Attorney General from January 1961 to September 1964, ...
blocked their efforts. Appeals to State Department officials responsible for administrative matters failed, as did the advocacy of Pennsylvania Senator
Joseph S. Clark Jr. Joseph Sill Clark Jr. (October 21, 1901January 12, 1990) was an American writer, lawyer and politician. A member of the Democratic Party, he served as the 90th Mayor of Philadelphia from 1952 to 1956 and as a United States Senator from Pennsylvan ...
on Melby's behalf. HUAC maintained a list of persons it considered ineligible for government employment that overrode State Department views. Melby dropped these efforts in 1966, when he moved to Canada. Harriman urged Melby to press the issue once again in 1977 at the start of the Carter administration, and
Richard Holbrooke Richard Charles Albert Holbrooke (April 24, 1941 – December 13, 2010) was an American diplomat and author. He was the only person to have held the position of Assistant Secretary of State for two different regions of the world (Asia from 1977 ...
lent his support. Secretary of State
Edmund Muskie Edmund Sixtus Muskie (March 28, 1914March 26, 1996) was an American statesman and political leader who served as the 58th United States Secretary of State under President Jimmy Carter, a United States Senator from Maine from 1959 to 1980, the 6 ...
restored Melby's security clearance in December 1980 and hired him to work as a consultant on the Sino-Vietnamese Conflict for several months.


Later years

After his dismissal from the State Department in 1953, Melby was unable to find work for several years. The department blocked him from positions in other government agencies. The political climate made academic institutions wary of hiring former State Department employees, although he held a one-year research fellowship at
Yale University Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and among the most prestigious in the wo ...
's Southeast Asia program for the academic year 1955-56. From 1956 to 1959, Melby was executive vice chairman of the National Council on Asian Affairs, which promoted the inclusion of Asian studies in secondary school curricula.David Shavit, ed., ''The United States in Asia: A Historical Dictionary'' (Greenwood Press, 1990), 341-2
available online
accessed October 12, 2011
From 1956 to 1964, Melby served as the director of foreign studies at the
University of Pennsylvania The University of Pennsylvania (also known as Penn or UPenn) is a private research university in Philadelphia. It is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and is ranked among the highest-regarded universitie ...
and taught part-time, and full-time in his final year. He stressed the importance of racial integration in U.S. education for the reputation of the U.S. overseas: During the Kennedy administration,
Sargent Shriver Robert Sargent Shriver Jr. (November 9, 1915 – January 18, 2011) was an American diplomat, politician, and activist. As the husband of Eunice Kennedy Shriver, he was part of the Kennedy family. Shriver was the driving force behind the creation ...
tried to appoint Melby as the director of
Peace Corps The Peace Corps is an independent agency and program of the United States government that trains and deploys volunteers to provide international development assistance. It was established in March 1961 by an executive order of President John F. ...
operations in Indonesia and Melby worked briefly training volunteers headed for
Ceylon Sri Lanka (, ; si, ශ්‍රී ලංකා, Śrī Laṅkā, translit-std=ISO (); ta, இலங்கை, Ilaṅkai, translit-std=ISO ()), formerly known as Ceylon and officially the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka, is an ...
. The appointment was blocked without any clear explanation, likely by anti-communists in Congress. In 1964, Melby wrote to Secretary of State Dean Rusk describing a similar outcome when he was considered for two positions at
George Washington University , mottoeng = "God is Our Trust" , established = , type = Private federally chartered research university , academic_affiliations = , endowment = $2.8 billion (2022) , preside ...
. Negotiations appeared final, but no offer came, "only evasion and vague apologies." In 1966, Melby founded the department of political studies at Canada's
University of Guelph , mottoeng = "to learn the reasons of realities" , established = May 8, 1964 ()As constituents: OAC: (1874) Macdonald Institute: (1903) OVC: (1922) , type = Public university , chancellor ...
, served as its first chairman for five years, and then continued as a professor. That same year, he joined a group of 198 scholars in a critique of U.S. policy toward China. It urged the admission of China to the
United Nations The United Nations (UN) is an intergovernmental organization whose stated purposes are to maintain international peace and international security, security, develop friendly relations among nations, achieve international cooperation, and be ...
, steps toward U.S. diplomatic recognition of China, the initiation of bilateral negotiations, and the trade of nonstrategic materials. Melby and Hordern, who was then working for the
National Science Foundation The National Science Foundation (NSF) is an independent agency of the United States government that supports fundamental research and education in all the non-medical fields of science and engineering. Its medical counterpart is the National I ...
and unwilling to move to Canada, divorced in 1967. He later married Canadian Roxana Carrier. In 1969, he published ''The Mandate of Heaven'' with a Canadian publisher after U.S. publishers turned him down.Newman, ''Cold War Romance, 282 It was an expanded version of the diary he kept during his service in China, illustrated with photographs by
Henri Cartier-Bresson Henri Cartier-Bresson (; 22 August 1908 – 3 August 2004) was a French humanist photographer considered a master of candid photography, and an early user of 35mm film. He pioneered the genre of street photography, and viewed photography as cap ...
.''New York Times''
Gaddis Smith, review of ''The Mandate of Heaven'', February 2, 1969
accessed February 11, 2011
He dedicated the volume to Hellman. He presented an account that invited comparison with contemporary events in Vietnam. One reviewer summarized its depiction of U.S. policy as "a bumbling effort to achieve vague purposes through the instrumentality of the Nationalist regime." He retired from teaching in 1978. In retirement, he co-edited a collection of the correspondence of Constantine Nabokov, a minor Russian diplomat, to American Donald W. Nesbit. Melby died of a heart attack on December 18, 1992, in Guelph General Hospital,
Guelph Guelph ( ; 2021 Canadian Census population 143,740) is a city in Southwestern Ontario, Canada. Known as "The Royal City", Guelph is roughly east of Kitchener and west of Downtown Toronto, at the intersection of Highway 6, Highway 7 and Wel ...
, Ontario, Canada. His third wife, Roxana Carrier Melby, survived him. His papers were deposited at the Harry S. Truman Library, which also holds an oral history based on interviews conducted with Melby in 1972.Truman Library
Oral History Interviews with John F. Melby
accessed October 11, 2011
A prize named for Melby, is awarded by the department of Political Science at the University of Guelph.


Select works

* ''Looking Glass for Americans: A Study of the Foreign Students at the University of Pennsylvania'', with Elinor K. Wolf (National Council on Asian Affairs, 1961)Library of Congress
Catalog of Copyright Entries. Third Series: 1961: July-December, 1527
accessed October 12, 2011
* ''The Mandate of Heaven: Record of a Civil War, China 1945-49'' (University of Toronto Press, 1969) * "The Origins of the Cold War in China," in Lori Lyn Bogle, ed., ''The Cold War'', Volume 1: ''Origins of the Cold War: The Great Historical Debate'' (Routledge, 2001), based on a paper read at the meeting of the American Historical Association, December 1967 * "Racial Policy and International Relations," ''Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science'', vol. 304, March 1956, 132-6 * "Great Power Rivalry in East Asia," ''International Journal'', vol. 26, no. 3, Summer 1971, 457-68 * "Maoism as a World Force," ''Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science'', vol. 402, July 1972, 26-39 * "The Foreign Student in America," ''Orbis Quarterly, Journal of World Affairs'', vol. 8, Spring 1964


References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Melby, John F. 1913 births 1992 deaths People from Portland, Oregon Illinois Wesleyan University alumni University of Chicago alumni American diplomats University of Pennsylvania faculty Victims of McCarthyism