Our Own Hall of Fame
BRAND WHITLOCK
WAR I UPSET PLANS
Envoy Wanted Leisure But Got 18-Hour Day
DAYTON DAILY NEWS MARCH 25, 1961
BY MARY ELLEN LYNCH
Daily News Staff Writer
Brand Whitlock accepted a post as minister to Belgium because he wanted leisure in which to write, but he ended up working 18-hour days in the turmoil of World War I.
The diplomat-author was born in Urbana on the day Ulysses S. Grant was inaugurated—Mar. 4, 1869. His father was a Methodist minister who moved from one small church to another preaching the evils of card playing, the theater and dancing. (An adult, sophisticated Whitlock later revolted against these harsh aspects of the church, but remained devoutly religious.)
YOUNG BRAND studied music, drawing and painting, won a Sunday school prize for composition when he was six and grew up to be a competent amateur artist.
He graduated from high school in Toledo, then turned his back on a family tradition of attending Ohio Wesleyan and got a job as a reporter on the Toledo Blade. After three years he moved to the Chicago Herald, but law and politics beckoned.
IN 1893 handsome, boyish-looking Whitlock took a thirst for knowledge and a taste for expensive cravats to Springfield, Ill., where he read law in the office of the secretary of state.
Admitted to the bar, Whitlock practiced in Toledo, then ran for mayor as an independent and beat out four other opponents. He served four terms (1906 to 1913), refused to run for a fifth, pressed constantly for social reforms. Although he was 37 when first elected, his youthful appearance earned him the title of “Boy Mayor.”
WHITLOCK’S liberal leanings attracted the attention of President Woodrow Wilson and in 1913, tall and impressive in pince-nez and frock coat, he went to Belgium as minister and later became ambassador.
The quiet life he had expected erupted when war came. Whitlock was charged with the responsibility of getting Americans home and of attending to the diplomatic business of half a dozen legations. He condemned militarism—British and French as well as German—and helped dissuade the Belgians from the folly of resistance in Brussels which would have meant wrecking the city.
THE AMBASSADOR worked tirelessly with international relief organizations to better the lot of the hard-put Belgians and when he left in 1922 a street in Brussels was affectionately named after him.
After the war Whitlock found time to write—novels, letters, biographies, magazine articles. He translated his own biography of Lincoln in French (he spoke it fluently) and wrote a widely-hailed two-volume biography of LaFayette.
WHEN HIS assignment in Belgium ended, Whitlock’s public career did, too. He continued writing, but in his later years expressed some disappointment that his literary career had never scaled the heights he had dreamed of as a boy.
In retirement Whitlock and his wife lived in Europe, spending the winters at Cannes on the Riviera and the summers on the Belgian coast. He was completing a biography of Thomas Jefferson when he died at Cannes in 1934 at the age of 65.
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