The Life and Times of the American Journalist Arno Dosch Fleurot (1879-1951): Defining American Liberalism in World War One Era through the Lens of Foreign Reporting

This study examines life and times of Arno Dosch Fleurot (1879--1951), the American veteran newspaperman, who was a foreign correspondent in Europe since 1914 and reported to Americans about many important world events---World War One and World War Two, revolutions in Russia and Germany to name a few. The focus of this research is Dosch Fleurot's experience as a foreign reporter during World War One and in the early 1920s, in the period that became the determinant for his professional and personal life. His witnesses and opinions about the war and its outcomes reflected in his articles for the Worlds Work, a monthly magazine, the New York World, and some other newspapers that published or syndicated his articles and his correspondence with family in Portland, Oregon exemplify the challenges the conflict brought to people with a liberal outlook. Indeed, the war experience raised doubts among the ranks of American liberals, and Dosch Fleurot was not the exception, about their core belief in the inevitable spread of democracy throughout the world. The purpose of this study is to examine Dosch Fleurot's evolution of this idealistic belief and illustrate how American liberals tried to reconcile their advocacy of the spread of democracy with the national interests of the United States. Since the beginning of World War One, the question of how international the American foreign policy should be became a controversial issue in the American society. The debate continues to this day.