Background
Clark Mell Eichelberger was born on July 29, 1896б in Freeport, Illinois. He was the son of Joseph Elmer Eichelberger and Olive Clark. His father was in the shoe business.
Clark Mell Eichelberger was born on July 29, 1896б in Freeport, Illinois. He was the son of Joseph Elmer Eichelberger and Olive Clark. His father was in the shoe business.
Clark Eichelberger was attending Union Elementary School from 1902 to 1910. Some of his teachers interested him in public affairs. He excelled at oratory and debating in high school. Eichelberger entered Northwestern University in 1914, intending to major in political science, but did not take a degree, leaving in 1917 to enlist in the army.
Eichelberger studied at the University of Chicago from 1919 to 1920. Too restless to remain, he left and went to Washington, D. C.
Eichelberger joined the Radcliffe Chautauqua System as a lecturer on international affairs. Often speaking about the League of Nations, he traveled to every state between 1922 and 1928.
He made his first direct contact with the League of Nations at the close of his 1923, Chautauqua lecture tour; he arrived in Geneva in December of that year and was introduced to several statesmen and Secretariat members.
He spent that winter in Europe studying the governments and conditions of nine different countries, becoming more eager than ever to work for the success of the League of Nations.
In 1927, Eichelberger accepted the directorship of the Illinois chapter of the League of Nations Non-Partisan Association, founded in 1923 to educate the public about the League of Nations and to support American participation in it.
He was appointed a director of the Midwest office when the organization was enlarged in 1928. In 1934, Eichelberger became national director of the League of Nations Association (LNA) in New York City.
With Adolf Hitler in power in Germany and war fear to grow, the LNA urged the American government to state the terms under which it would be willing to enter the League of Nations.
In November 1939, the LNA helped organize the Commission to Study the Organization of Peace (CSOP), which was to develop plans for a new international arrangement to replace the League of Nations.
Eichelberger was successively its director (1939 - 1964), chairman (1964 - 1968), and executive director (1968 - 1974). Soon thereafter, the LNA helped establish the Non-Partisan Committee for Peace Through Revision of the Neutrality Law, which sought to permit aid to countries victimized by aggression, an effort Eichelberger discussed with President Franklin D. Roosevelt on September 7, 1939.
In May 1940, the LNA assisted in the formation of the Committee to Defend America by Aiding the Allies (CDAAA). As national chairman of the CDAAA (1940 - 1941), Eichelberger called for victory over Nazi tyranny.
From 1942 to 1943, Eichelberger served on a committee, chaired by Under Secretary of State Sumner Welles, that prepared the first draft of the United Nations Charter, and Eichelberger became the leader of the group of consultants from nongovernmental organizations that advised the American delegation to the San Francisco Conference (1945) at which the charter was completed.
In 1945, the name of the LNA was changed to the American Association for the United Nations (AAUN); Eichelberger was its executive director from 1947 to 1964.
With the merger of the AAUN and the United States Committee for the United Nations to form the United Nations Association of the USA in 1964, Eichelberger devoted his energies to the CSOP.
Eichelberger initiated a weekly radio program, "The UN Is My Beat, " on NBC, a series running from April 8, 1949, to October 25, 1953, on which he reviewed United Nations issues and activities.
Eichelberger harbored a second concern: to bring about American participation in the World Court. Supporting collective security against aggression, he broadcast from Prague and Geneva in 1938, weeks before the Munich Pact, that war could be avoided if the nations desiring peace were willing to fight to save Czechoslovakia.
Clark argued that American civilization could never survive otherwise. Believing that winning the war and winning the peace could not be separated, Eichelberger, often called an unofficial secretary of state, conferred with President Roosevelt on November 13, 1942, telling him it was imperative to establish peace machinery before the war ended.
Roosevelt was aware how quickly postwar reaction against international cooperation could set in.
As editor of its monthly magazine, Changing World, he maintained that "public opinion is never static and it must be stimulated by constant discussion and information. "
He enlisted Eleanor Roosevelt as a volunteer to increase its membership nationwide.
His philosophy was that the work of the United Nations was all-encompassing.
In 1920, Clark Eichelberger met Rosa Kohler, an author and teller of children's stories, who was with the Chautauqua circuit. They were married on October 6, 1924, and had no children.