Scope and Content Note
The papers of Arthur Sweetser (1888-1968) span the years 1913-1961, with the bulk of the material from 1919 to 1947. The collection is focused on the Paris Peace Conference, the League of Nations, and peace plans following World War II, including the creation of the United Nations and other world organizations. The papers demonstrate the various means the author used to promote international cooperation and United States participation in international organization, especially the League of Nations. The collection is organized into eleven series: Diaries and Biographical Material ; State Department Correspondence ; Family Correspondence and Memoir ; Peace Conference Material ; General League Correspondence ; General Correspondence ; Subject File ; Speech, Article, and Book File ; Printed Matter ; News Clippings and Scrapbooks ; and Oversize .
Up to and including the Paris Peace Conference, much of the material deals with preparing information for publication or distribution to reporters and newspapers. Correspondence on league matters begins immediately after the 1919 conference and continues until after the Manchurian crisis of 1931-1932. From 1932 to 1937 the bulk of the correspondence— except for the Italo-Ethiopian War—is about the Rigot property, a donation to the league, rather than about international matters. Beginning with the New York World's Fair of 1939, the correspondence is again mainly concerned with league problems.
Correspondence from World War II deals with plans for educating the American people for postwar international organization. Correspondence in the postwar period is also focused on United Nations problems as well as the Woodrow Wilson Foundation, the Washington World Affairs Center, and the International Schools Foundation.
The most substantive material prior to the Paris Peace Conference is the correspondence with Herbert David Croly, Malcolm W. Davis, and Willard Dickerman Straight, and interviews with United States Secretary of State Robert Lansing. Of the League of Nations period, the correspondence with Sir Eric Drummond, Raymond B. Fosdick, Sean Lester, Pitman B. Potter, John D. Rockefeller III, and F. P. Walters is most substantive; during World War II and the United Nations period it is that with Pierre Comert, Elmer Holmes Davis, Benjamin Gerig, Huntington Gilchrist, Carl Joachim Hambro, Manley O. Hudson, Archibald MacLeish, Salvador de Madariaga, Philip Noel-Baker, Byron Price, William E. Rappard, Edward R. Stettinius, and Sumner Welles.
There are also significant letters from Dean Acheson; Bernard M. Baruch; Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, Viscount Cecil of Chelwood; Joseph Grew; Edward Mandell House; Cordell Hull; Trygve Lie; Franklin D. Roosevelt; Harry S. Truman; and Edith Bolling Galt Wilson.