Although less familiar today than his colleague Ernest Hemingway, in 1922 Lincoln Steffens was by far the best known American journalist covering the Lausanne Conference. This podcast includes clips from a performance project developed by Jamie Walters, based closely on Steffens letters. It complements Walters’ previous project centred on another journalist, Clare Sheridan, that featured in a previous TLP podcast, and which was also performed at TLP’s Thessaloniki conference in November 2023. In between clips Jamie is joined by David Roessel, Deputy Director of the Interdisciplinary Center for Hellenic Studies at Stockton University. Recorded on 18 December 2023, our discussion considered Steffens’ troubled relationship with democracy, and his admiration for strong leaders such as Lenin, Mussolini and Steffens’ good friend Theodore Roosevelt. As far as Steffens was concerned the people “wanted to follow, not to lead, to be governed, not to govern themselves.”

LINCOLN STEFFENS (LEFT) AND ERNEST HEMINGWAY AT LAUSANNE, 1922.

Steffens’ view of diplomacy was shaped by his experience at McClure’s Magazine, where muckrakers like Ida Tarbell had been busy exposing the Rockefellers and other wirepullers – powerful men of business who had politicians on a string. For Steffens and his colleague, former crime reporter Sam Spewack, who spent most of his time at Lausanne playing the violin in his hotel room, it was oil men like Rockefeller who controlled the diplomats gathered at Lausanne. When the oil men decided it was time to make peace, so their thinking ran, world leaders would make peace. If the oil men were not ready, there was nothing to be done.

This conference is clear enough to me. I see through it. I don’t care for the details, the daily news. So long as I have the key to it, have seen it at work, I can visualize and correct the newspaper reports. I am free to leave, therefore. And I may still do that or stay in Paris.

Lincoln Steffens

Episode 45 – Fiddler on the Front Page

Podcasts are published by TLP for the purpose of encouraging informed debate on the legacies of the events surrounding the Lausanne Conference. The views expressed by participants do not necessarily represent the views or opinions of TLP, its partners, convenors or members.

MAIN IMAGE: DETAIL OF CERCLE DE LA PRESSE, FROM ALOÏS DERSO AND EMERY KELÈN, GUIGNOL À LAUSANNE, 1923.