SECOND CHANCE: The Triumph of Internationalism in America During World War II

In a highly readable popular study of the American antecedents to the founding of the United Nations, the author recounts the long and difficult passage made by New York and Washington based internationalists who were determined that there be a ""second chance"" to spare the world's people from the increasingly destructive sweep of war. From the heady days of the League to Enforce the Peace, through the debacle of the U.S. Senate's as vote against joining the League of Nations, from the recreation of an internationalist vehicle in the form of the League of Nations Non-Partisan Association during the arid Harding-Coolidge era to vindication and triumph at San Francisco in 1945, a gallant group of world-minded men led by autocratic Hamilton Holt, Clark Eichelberger, Raymond Fosdick, and Claude Wickersham, toiled away unconvinced that pitifully small funds and scant attention gave a true reading on how Americans felt about this nation's participation in an international organization working for peace. Mr. Divine's book is a model of clarity and style, and the narration of the saievete and parochialism of both opponents and advocates of U.S. membership in the League is exciting, depressing and quite irresistible. It belongs wherever good, informative history is appreciated.