Vita: John Gilbert Winant
Brief life of an exemplary public servant: 1889-1947
by James O. Freedman
Now almost forgotten, John Gilbert Winant was widely
admired during his lifetime, especially for his exemplary service
as governor of New Hampshire. Comparisons of his character to
that of Lincoln were frequent and sincere. In 1936 he was prominently
mentioned as a candidate for president. During World War II, he
served with distinction as ambassador to Britain and returned
home to Concord in 1946 with a glowing toast from his wartime
friend and admirer Winston Churchill still ringing in his memory.
At 58, he seemed to have many years of public service before him.
But that was not to be.
Raised in Concord and educated at nearby St. Paul's School,
Winant attended Princeton, but did not graduate. Instead he returned
to teach history at St. Paul's, where the rector recognized in
him "a great and rare gift of influencing boys along the very
highest paths." His political career began with his election to
the state legislature in 1916. After serving in the American Air
Service during World War I, he became assistant rector at St.
Paul's. But public life again beckoned, and Winant went on to
serve three terms as governor of New Hampshire--from 1925 to 1927
(when he was the youngest governor in the nation) and from 1931
to 1935.
Winant was a lifelong Republican whose humanitarian principles
transcended party lines. Influenced by the writings of Charles
Dickens and John Ruskin and inspired by the examples of Lincoln
and Theodore Roosevelt, he was as governor a forceful advocate
of progressive reform initiatives, including a 48-hour work week
for women and children, a minimum wage, and the abolition of capital
punishment. In 1935, Franklin D. Roosevelt appointed him the first
chairman of the Social Security Board. When Social Security became
a major issue during the 1936 presidential campaign, Winant resigned
so that he could better defend the new program, alongside Roosevelt,
from criticisms by the Republican party. His decision to resign
in order to support a program in which he believed unreservedly--even
though it meant repudiating his own political party--offers a
model of principled action virtually unknown in contemporary politics.
He found another outlet for his idealism in 1939, when Roosevelt
chose him as director of the International Labor Organization
in Geneva. As an impartial international civil servant, Winant
worked for social and economic reform even as the world collapsed
in war.
In February 1941, Roosevelt appointed him ambassador to Great
Britain. During the Battle of Britain, Winant walked the streets
of London, ablaze from the aerial bombardments, offering assistance
to the injured amid the rubble of their homes and stores. His
shy sincerity and quiet fearlessness endeared him to the British
people and helped buoy that beleaguered nation.
Winant was rare among public figures in being a very private
person. And the temper of the private man created and influenced
the actions of the public man. To read his speeches is to sense
the same greatness of soul, magnanimity of purpose, and simplicity
of language that appear in Lincoln's addresses. In June 1942,
he told striking coal miners in Durham, England, "This is the
people's democracy. We must keep it wide and vigorous, alive to
need, of whatever kind, and ready to meet it, whether it be danger
from without or well-being from within, always remembering that
it is the things of the spirit that in the end prevail--that...daring
to live dangerously we are learning to live generously...." His
speech was a resounding success: by joining the life-or-death
struggle to preserve democracy with the concrete social purpose
of improving the economic circumstances of working people, Winant
had deepened the war's meaning for the common man. The miners
went back to their crucial work.
Throughout the war, Winant drove himself relentlessly, day and
night. He was already utterly exhausted when Roosevelt's death
in April 1945 robbed him of his close friend and mentor. He now
reported to a president who neither knew him well nor appreciated
the extent of his wartime efforts. Then, three months later, a
landslide victory by the Labor Party swept Churchill out of office.
Everywhere Winant turned, he saw the drama in which he had participated
so significantly drawing to a close. In March 1946, President
Truman appointed a new ambassador to London.
Back in New Hampshire, Winant's frustrations grew. After three
decades of public life, he had to accommodate himself to the quieter
pace of a private citizen. He was in debt, under pressure to complete
a series of books on his experiences, estranged from his socially
ambitious wife, and troubled by a darkening personal depression.
On November 3, 1947, the very day that his only book, Letter
from Grosvenor Square, was published, he committed suicide
at his home in Concord. His publisher had rushed a copy of the
book to him, but he never saw it.
Reportedly Winant had been despondent for some time. His public
achievements and his great capacities for service gave no protection
against the melancholia and hopelessness that ultimately overwhelmed
him. And yet, by drawing upon an elevated spirit and an unswerving
idealism, this quiet man from a small state contributed greatly
to the nation's coral reef of character.
