John Fremont Melby (July 1, 1913 – December 18, 1992) was a United States diplomat, who served in the Soviet Union from 1943 to 1945 and in China from 1945 to 1948.
He held other positions with the Department of State until 1953, when he was dismissed as a security risk because of his long and intimate association with the playwright Lillian Hellman, who was accused of communist ties.
[10] 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.
[13] In December 1945, he recorded his assessment of the two sides in his diary:[14] One of the great mysteries to me is why one group of people retains faith, whereas another from much the same origins and experiences loses it.
Over the years the Communists have absorbed an incredible amount of punishment, have been guilty of their own share of atrocities, and yet have retained a kind of integrity, faith in their destiny, and the will to prevail.
By contrast the Kuomintang [Nationalists] has gone through astonishing tribulations, has committed its excesses, has survived a major war with unbelievable prestige, and is now throwing everything away at a frightening rate, because the revolutionary faith is gone and has been replaced by the smell of corruption and decay.He faulted U.S. policy in his diary in June 1948 as the communist victory neared: "All the power of the United States will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.
It gives one to wonder about the rest.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.
[13] 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.
The investigation began in September 1951, a week after ex-communist Martin Berkeley told the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) that Hellman had attended an organizational meeting of the Communist Party in 1937.
[27] 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, 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.
Appeals to State Department officials responsible for administrative matters failed, as did the advocacy of Pennsylvania Senator Joseph S. Clark Jr. on Melby's behalf.
HUAC maintained a list of persons it considered ineligible for government employment that overrode State Department views.
Secretary of State Edmund Muskie restored Melby's security clearance in December 1980 and hired him to work as a consultant on the Sino-Vietnamese Conflict for several months.
[13][36] From 1956 to 1964, Melby served as the director of foreign studies at the University of Pennsylvania and taught part-time, and full-time in his final year.
[37] He stressed the importance of racial integration in U.S. education for the reputation of the U.S. overseas:[38] No small part of traditional American prestige in Asia has come from our advocacy of "desegregation" for Asians.
When we are concerned by foreign reactions we would do well to remember that in our position we no longer have a private life, and that what we do at home takes on an enlarged, perhaps often an exaggerated, importance in the eyes of the word as evidence of what an anxious world can expect from us.
[39] 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.
"[40] In 1966, Melby founded the department of political studies at Canada's University of Guelph, served as its first chairman for five years, and then continued as a professor.