PUBLIC PIONEER

Baldwin, Roger

Public Pioneer Glad Adventure, by Francis Bowes Sayre. Macmillan. 347 pp. $6. Reviewed by Roger Baldwin TOO LITTLE known by the American public during a life-time of high minded public service,...

...Readers looking for a personal story will find it richly intertwined with public activities—quite inescapably, since he married the daughter of Woodrow Wilson in a White House wedding...
...Both his personal sanctions and his hopes for humanity were grounded in Christian love and brotherhood...
...Relief Administration...
...first deputy director of the U.N...
...General Assembly, and first chairman of its Trusteeship Council...
...Not even for those who opposed or misunderstood him does he have an unkind word...
...One result of his many interests was his brief service as Massachusetts commissioner of correction in which he did pioneer work in uprooting improper political influence...
...Glad Adventure, rightly titled, is testimony not only to the best in American public life in a crucial generation but to the best in Christian faith in action...
...high commissioner to the Philippines up to the outbreak of World War II...
...Assistant Secretary of State under Cordell Hull, with foreign trade as his field...
...Reviewed by Roger Baldwin TOO LITTLE known by the American public during a life-time of high minded public service, Francis Sayre, at a bit over seventy, tells a story which places him in the front rank of pioneers in America's international role...
...Readers searching for historical material will be most intrigued by the chapters on Siam and the exciting account of his two months' siege on Corregidor, living in a rock tunnel with his family, and escaping by submarine...
...In all his career, Sayre was motivated by a profound sense of Christian commitment to human welfare...
...Just a listing of his public posts testifies to the amazing variety and international significance of the responsibilities he carried from the early 1920's to recent years: legal adviser to the Kingdom of Siam, with whose people he fell in love...
...Sayre's public posts grew out of his role as teacher, first at his alma mater, Williams, where he gave one of the earliest courses in international affairs, and then at his legal alma mater, Harvard Law School, where for fifteen years he taught some Of the earliest courses in labor law and crime...
...delegate to the U.N...

Vol. 21 • July 1957 • No. 7


 
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