Scope and Content Note
The papers of Huntington Gilchrist (1891 1975) span the period 1913-1973, with the bulk of the material concentrated in the years 1919-1928 and 1945-1955. The collection includes correspondence, memoranda, printed and mimeographed documents, reports, research material, speeches, photographs, travel diaries, press clippings, and printed matter that document Gilchrist's lifelong interest in international affairs, especially his activities on behalf of the League of Nations, the United Nations, and the Institute of Pacific Relations. The papers are organized into ten series: Personal Files, Diaries, General Correspondence, League of Nations File, Institute of Pacific Relations File, United Nations File, Subject File , Speeches and Writings File, Miscellany and Oversize.
The papers relating to Gilchrist's service with the League of Nations comprise the largest single element of the collection and of this material, some of the richest includes correspondence with Eric Drummond, Raymond B. Fosdick, and Arthur Sweetser. Beginning in 1919-1920, this correspondence is concerned with such matters as the first meeting of the League Council, the organization of the League Secretariat, the question of where the league headquarters would be located, and the controversy over American entry and its impact upon the league.
During his years with the League of Nations, Gilchrist frequently acted as liaison with the United States government and with American internationalists. As a result, America's relationship with the league throughout the 1920s is a prominent topic in Gilchrist's correspondence with Drummond, Fosdick, and Sweetser. Information on this subject is also contained in Gilchrist's exchanges with Charles C. Bauer, Nicholas Murray Butler, John W. Davis, Norman H. Davis, Allen Dulles, Hugh Gibson, Leland Harrison, Edward Mandell House, Manley O. Hudson, Philip C. Jessup, James G. McDonald, Denys P. Myers, and James Thomson Shotwell. This topic dominates a significant portion of the Subject File subseries of the League of Nations File, which includes material concerning the trips Gilchrist made to the United States in the 1920s, especially his visit in 1927 when he met with prominent Americans to discuss league activities. In addition, the Speeches and Writings File contains press clippings about talks that Gilchrist gave while in the United States, as well as articles about the league he wrote for the Philadelphia Public Ledger in 1923.
Because of Gilchrist's official involvement with the mandates system, his papers contain a large amount of material on this subject. The collection includes a near complete set of Permanent Mandates Commission minutes for the years 1921-1929, correspondence, memoranda, and documents from 1919 and 1920 relating to the establishment of the mandate system and the drafting of the mandatory agreements, the texts of the mandatory agreements, and official reports submitted to the league by the mandatory powers. In addition, the Speeches and Writings File contains talks and articles about mandates that Gilchrist prepared as a member of the League Secretariat. After he left the league, Gilchrist continued to take an interest in the mandates system and in the governance of dependent peoples. The Miscellany subseries in the League of Nations File contains printed matter and correspondence about mandates that Gilchrist accumulated after 1928, while similar material concerning dependent areas is in the Subject File series under the terms "Colonies" and "Pacific Islands" and in the United Nations File under "Trusteeship." The Speeches and Writings File includes articles and talks about colonial questions and the disposition of the mandates, prepared by Gilchrist in the 1940s.
Although America's relationship with the league and the mandates system are the two most important topics in the League of Nations series, the General Correspondence and Subject File subseries also document other areas of concern to Gilchrist. The most prominent of these are the administration of Danzig and the Saar, the league's efforts to publicize its activities, and such educational endeavors as the Institute of International Relations, the Institute of Politics, and the International School of Geneva, in which Gilchrist took an active role along with Arthur Sweetser. The Subject File also includes mimeographed minutes of League of Nations directors meetings for the years 1919-1921 and papers dealing with the drafting of the League Covenant, such as the Commission on the League of Nations minutes and related documents.
Papers relating to Gilchrist's work on behalf of the United Nations in the 1940s make up the second most voluminous element of the collection. The United Nations File includes correspondence, memoranda, documents, press clippings, and printed matter concerning the San Francisco Conference, as well as correspondence and printed matter on the subject of trusteeship. However, most of this series reflects Gilchrist's work as executive secretary of the Inspection Group on Selecting the Permanent Site and Interim Facilities for the Headquarters of the United Nations. This material includes correspondence, memoranda, itineraries, reports on specific localities in the northeast United States, press clippings, and the inspection group's final report, which recommended that the United Nations permanent headquarters be located in the North Stamford-Greenwich, Connecticut area. Also in the United Nations File is material on site selection that was gathered by Richard S. Childs, who assisted the group and continued to take an active interest in site selection after the completion of its work. Childs later gave these files to Gilchrist, who included them with his own papers.
The collection contains only a few of the files that Gilchrist maintained during the twenty years he worked with American Cyanamid. Among this material is correspondence dealing with the early use of the antibiotic aureomycin and correspondence and journal articles about plague control, including three pieces he coauthored.
There is relatively little in these papers concerning his service in Belgium and Pakistan. However, the collection includes a report on the Belgian Congo and Ruanda-Urundi, which Gilchrist submitted after a personal inspection tour in 1952, the texts of several speeches that he delivered during his stay in Belgium, and some fragmentary correspondence and memoranda reflecting his work there.
Like so much of his career, Huntington Gilchrist's private activities centered around public affairs and international relations. As a doctoral student at Columbia University, he prepared a two hundred page work, "The Development of the City in China," that he planned to submit as his thesis. However, no one on the Columbia faculty was prepared to evaluate it, so Gilchrist wrote a study of the finances of the state of Maine as his dissertation. The Gilchrist collection includes a typescript of his study of the Chinese city, rough drafts, research notes, press clippings, printed source material, summaries of interviews conducted in China, and notes detailing his personal observations of poorhouses, hospitals, and other institutions. While in China, Gilchrist took approximately four hundred photographs, and most of them are annotated. They have been transferred to the Prints and Photographs Division of the Library.
A relatively large amount of material reflects Gilchrist's role in the Institute of Pacific Relations in the 1940s and early 1950s. Included are minutes of meetings, correspondence, and memoranda (especially from E. C. Carter, Raymond Dennett, and William Holland) that shed light upon the activities and internal politics of the institute, particularly its response to the charges that it was Communist dominated.
Gilchrist also served as trustee and vice chairman of the Brookings Institution, and his papers provide information about its program and internal affairs. A small amount of material reflects Gilchrist's activity on behalf of the New York School of Social Work, the Royal Institute of International Affairs, and the Woodrow Wilson Foundation.
Gilchrist's private life is documented by his travel diaries, a small Personal File series, and a considerably more voluminous General Correspondence. The Personal File includes resumés, job applications, documents and memoranda relating to Gilchrist's army service during World War I, and letters dealing with his decision to leave the League of Nations to work for American Cyanamid. The General Correspondence deals with such matters as personal finances and properties, club memberships, social engagements, purchases, and trips, and also contains correspondence with his friends, including letters from British acquaintances that reflect the impact of the Second World War upon English life. On many of his travels, Gilchrist recorded his impressions of the places he visited and the people he met. His papers include these diaries, as well as drafts, rough notes, and some related correspondence.
Gilchrist took great interest in his papers, and those that document his private activities are remarkably complete. When he prepared his papers for shipment to the Library of Congress in 1973 and 1974, he annotated many of the documents, in some cases identifying material whose significance would otherwise have been obscured. Most of these notes are filed with the papers they describe, although some of this material is included in the Miscellany series, which also contains a brief description of Gilchrist's league-related papers.
The manner in which the Gilchrist collection is organized generally reflects the filing practices employed when the papers were in Gilchrist's possession. In the papers accumulated after Gilchrist left the league, outgoing materials were generally attached to the incoming items that had elicited a reply. Often all of the exchanges that dealt with the same matter were clipped or stapled together and filed under the date of the most recent or covering item. In general, this scheme has not been tampered with, and therefore, the correspondence in the General Correspondence, Institute of Pacific Relations, United Nations, and Subject Files is arranged chronologically by the date of the most recent or covering letter in a series of attached items.
In the General Correspondence, where the time lags between the first and last exchanges in a series are generally the greatest, the dates provided in the container list represent the dates of the earliest and most recent covering items in each folder, and, therefore, the folders usually contain some earlier material. However, in the Institute of Pacific Relations, United Nations, and Subject Files, the dates provided represent the true span dates for the contents of each folder.