Reuben Henry Markham (February 21, 1887 – December 29, 1949) was a journalist for the Christian Science Monitor who wrote numerous books, including "an attack on fascism,"[1]The Wave of the Past, which urged American intervention in World War II.
[2] During Reconstruction era, he was a financial agent for the American Missionary Association,[3] which founded eleven historically black colleges,[4] including Beach Institute in Savannah, Georgia where he taught from 1875 to 1880.
Although offered the pulpit of an Unitarian Church in Palo Alto, Ca., Markham felt it was his "duty" to explain both the Balkans to Americans through a series of books as well as bring information on "the best things in Anglo-Saxon religion, education and literature" to the Bulgarians.
"[11] Markham then started his own Bulgarian language newspaper, Svet, (World), which addressed Bulgaria's major issues, including governmental repression.
Vienna was the home of an active Anglo-American press corps during the interwar years, including Dorothy Thompson, William Shirer, and John Gunther.
Returning to the United States in June, 1939, Markham conducted a lecture tour and wrote a series of articles in August for the Monitor entitled "Rediscovering America," in which he directly addressed his position in the looming war.
"I had long observed the workings of the Nazi machine and had felt convinced that its builders would not pause in the expansionist program....If these states (Great Britain and France) are crushed, the foundations for democracy will be swept away....The issue is clear….self-government…is in danger of destruction....Humanity may again be thrust into the old abyss of absolutism....I believe that is my struggle too.
"[19] In March 1941, Markham weighed in on 'the Great Debate'[20] over America's entry into World War II, when he published The Wave of the Past,[21] his rebuttal to Anne Morrow Lindbergh's no.
"[29] Explaining how dictatorships distort reality by equating opposites, Markham wrote in an article at this time in the Monitor that "the multitudes are told that chains give freedom, that slavery is liberty, that war is peace, that the black resurging past is the future.
"[30] These concepts and phrasing anticipate the Ministry of Truth's slogans in George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four: "WAR IS PEACE, SLAVERY IS FREEDOM, IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH" .
"[33] When British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Roosevelt threw their support to Tito, and withdrew it from Serbian Chetnik leader Draza Mihailovic, Markham believed it meant that the post-war Yugoslavia would become Communist, as might all of southeastern Europe.
[34] He felt that Britain and "to a certain extent" America were complicit in helping Tito fight the Serbs in a civil war, communicating his concerns directly to General Eisenhower's chief political advisor, Robert Murphy.
"[38] In 1945, after the war ended, the Monitor posted Markham to Bulgaria, Hungary and Romania where he wrote about Communist activities in Central and Southeastern Europe.
"[43] Meeting with reporters afterwards, the expelled Monitor correspondent described one incident telling them that after covering a peasant party meeting that was broken up by a 'band of ruffians,' he had spent the night with "the local leader of the peasant party in Bucovina....Later the 'band of ruffians'...came into the house at midnight and killed the political leader with bursts of machine gun fire.
[45] While in Bulgaria, Markham issued a call for the United States to provide economic assistance to a devastated Europe, predating the Marshall Plan by almost two years.
[55][56] He worked closely with the National Committee for a Free Europe, negotiating its covert relationship with the Office of Policy Coordination, along with its head Frank Wisner.
The day before he suffered his heart attack he completed editing "Communists Crush Churches in Eastern Europe," the first in his projected series of booklets.
[59] After his death on December 29, 1949, the Christian Science Monitor published an editorial about Markham entitled "Friend of Humanity" saying: "Moscow understood how devastatingly its pretended regard for the 'little man,' its ideological abstractions and its massive brutality were shown up by this humanitarian scholar's genuine love of liberty and of his fellow men.
"[60] Markham was "noted as a writer, lecturer, and author," according to the New York Times,[61] and for opposing dictatorships from his days in Bulgaria in the 1920s, to Nazi Germany, to the Soviet Union after World War II.
Erwin Canham, the Monitor's longest serving editor, wrote that Markham's "work stands almost alone in American journalism for its simplicity, integrity, and direct, personal knowledge.