Clarence Streit

Clarence Streit
Born Clarence Kirshman Streit [1]
January 21, 1896
California, Missouri, U.S.A.
Died July 6, 1986 (aged 90)
Washington, D.C.
Occupation war correspondent
Nationality American
Alma mater University of Montana
The Sorbonne
Oxford University
Notable works Union Now
Spouse Jeanne Defrance
Signature

Clarence Kirschmann Streit (German pronunciation: [ʃtʀaɪ̯t]; January 21, 1896 – July 6, 1986) was a journalist and Atlanticist who played a prominent role in the Atlantic Movement.

Life and career

Streit, of Palatine German origin, moved with his family to Missoula, Montana in 1911. In Missoula, he founded the Konah, a high school paper that is now one of the oldest in the United States in continuous publication.[2] While a student at Montana State University (now the University of Montana), he volunteered for military service during World War I, serving in an Intelligence unit in France and assisting the American delegation at the Conference of Versailles. He was a Rhodes scholar at University of Oxford in 1920. He married Jeanne Defrance in Paris in 1921, after which he became a foreign correspondent for the New York Times.

In 1929, he was assigned to cover the League of Nations in Switzerland, where he witnessed the League's slow disintegration and collapse. That experience, coupled with the rise of totalitarian regimes in Europe, convinced him that mankind's best hope was a federal union of democracies, modeled on American federalism. This led him to write Union Now, a book advocating the political integration of the democracies of Western Europe (including their colonies) and the other English-speaking countries at that time (the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa). The book was published in 1938, on the eve of World War II.[3] It had sold over 300,000 copies by 1972.[4]

Soon after the book's publication, Streit founded Federal Union, Inc. (later renamed the Association to Unite the Democracies) to promote his vision. In 1949, with William Clayton and Owen Roberts, Streit founded the Atlantic Union Committee, advocating the transformation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) into a political entity.

The Streit Council, a successor organization to the Association to Unite the Democracies, was named after him.

References

  1. ↑ Who Was Who, Vol. IX, pp. 345-346.
  2. ↑ Guide to the Clarence Streit Papers at the University of Montana
  3. ↑ 'Elijah *from Missoula', Time, Mar. 27, 1950.
  4. ↑ Kuehl, Warren F., and Dunn, Lynne K. (1997). Keeping the Covenant: American Internationalists and the League of Nations, 1920-1939, pp. 102-03. Kent State University Press. ISBN 0-87338-566-7.

Bibliography

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