An Intelligent American's Guide to the Peace

29 cm, vi, 370 pages. Endpaper map. Maps. Front cover stained and damaged at bottom. Some early pages soiled and stained at the bottom. Benjamin Sumner Welles (October 14, 1892 September 24, 1961) was an American government official and diplomat in the Foreign Service. He was a major foreign policy adviser to President Franklin D. Roosevelt and served as Under Secretary of State from 1936 to 1943, during FDR's presidency. Speaking to the Foreign Policy Association, he sketched his views of the post-war world, including American participation in a world organization with military capability. He also proposed the creation of regional organizations. He also called on the President to express his opinions and help shape public opinion, praising the President at length. He foresaw the end to colonialism as a guiding principle of the new world order. Welles became a prominent commentator and author on foreign affairs. In 1945, he joined the American Broadcasting Company to guide the organization of the "Sumner Welles Peace Forum", a series of four radio broadcasts providing expert commentary on the San Francisco Conference, which wrote the founding document of the United Nations.[38] He undertook a project to edit a series of volumes on foreign relations for Harvard University Press. Mr. Welles believes that the American people cannot fulfill their responsibilities in the society of nations unless they know the basic geographical, historical, economic and political facts of life in the rest of the world. With the assistance of a staff of competent experts, therefore, he has assembled this valuable compendium of information, covering not only the independent states but a number of the major dependent areas. The countries are taken up in alphabetical order and their affairs are discussed under four headings: the land and the people, the nation's economy, its history 1919-44, and its stake in the peace. The material is well organized, succinctly and clearly presented, and on the whole accurate. The compilers have also felt free to insert judgments on conditions, trends and men, and this lifts the volume above the level of a mere factual compendium of unarticulated data. In the introduction Mr. Welles takes occasion to restate the principles and program which guided him in his post as Under Secretary of State and more lately in his educational work in the press and over the radio. Presumed First Edition, First printing thus.…