Brainerd P. Salmon: American Journalist (and Much More) and Friend of Greece

In American Influence in Greece, 1917-1929 (Kent, Ohio 1988), historian Louis P. Cassimatis refers to Brainerd P. Salmon, chairman of the American Chamber of Commerce in Greece, twice. In the Preface, by quoting a line from Salmon’s Glimpses of Greece (1928): “‘American interests in Greece are commercial, financial, educational, and at times philanthropic, but never political’.” And again, in Chapter Five under “Constantine and the Forced Loan of 1922,” when Cassimatis discusses the three-man economic and diplomatic mission that the Greek Government sent to Washington D.C. in the fall of 1921.

The mission composed of John Gennadius, former minister of Greece to Great Britain, Stamos Papafrangos, solicitor of the National Bank of Greece, and Salmon was sent to the United States by the Royalist government of Demetrios Gounaris to obtain recognition of King Constantine as head of the Greek State and request the advancement of the remaining part of the Tripartite Loan of 1918 (about 33 million dollars), which had been suspended. (Until King Constantine formally acknowledged that he had succeeded his dead son King Alexander, the United States could not honor agreements made with the previous Greek government, that of Eleutherios Venizelos.) Failing that goal, the three men had high hopes for a private loan from American banks since there were already several U.S. commercial firms active in Greece in the early 1920s (Cassimatis 1988, 166-172).

According to Cassimatis, the idea of a Greek mission to the U.S. was the “brainchild of Paxton P. Hibben” (1880-1928), a former diplomat and an Associated Press war correspondent sent to Greece in 1915, and a close friend of King Constantine (so close that, in 1920, Hibben would publish Constantine I and the Greek People, in support of Constantine’s decision that Greece should remain neutral during WW I). Hibben’s recommendations included Papafrangos, Philippos Dragoumis, Ion’s younger brother, and Alexander Mercati, “a confidant of the Royal Family” (Malakasses 1976). Gennadius, writing to Demetrios Maximos, Governor of the National Bank of Greece, described in detail his meeting with Prime Minister Gounaris in London in the fall of 1921. According to Gennadius, it was Gounaris who persistently asked him to head the Greek mission to America (ASCSA Archives, Joannes Gennadius Papers, Box 4, folder 15). Maximos must have supported the inclusion of Papafrangos, a lawyer and a high-ranking officer of the National Bank of Greece.

BPS Enters the Scene

But how did an American like Brainerd (or Brainard) Pomeroy Salmon become involved in this mission? I became interested in Salmon because his name kept popping up in the institutional records of the American School in the early 1920s. A google name search produced very little, however. Searching in www.ancestry.com  and www.newspapers.com proved more fruitful. Salmon also appears in the Eleutherios Venizelos Papers at the Benaki Museum (accessed through www.searchculture.gr).  The Salmon puzzle remains far from complete, but I was able to piece together certain parts of it.