Clark Eichelberger

Clark Mell Eichelberger (1896–1980) was a 20th-century American peace activist who championed first the League of Nations and then its successor, the United Nations.

Background Eichelberger was born in 1896 in Freeport, Illinois. His parents were Joseph Elmer Eichelberger and Olive Clark. They descended from pre-revolutionary Swiss and English settlers. He interrupted and never resumed his studies at Northwestern University.

In 1944, in a review on book about the United Nations, he commented: The world has so shrunk that the distance from Washington to any other place in the world is less in time than the distance from Washington to New York in the early history of our country. In this kind of a world there is not room for several sets of moralities and rules of international conduct. Above and beyond any natural groupings must be universal law, and a common morality, and a universal organization.

In 1955, Eichelberger was advocating for the United Nations and the peacemaking role of its General Assembly.

Eichelberger was also associated with the World Federation of United Nations Associations, the Committee to Defend America by Aiding the Allies, Citizens for Victory, the Non-Partisan Committee for Peace through Revision of the Neutrality Law, Free World Association, the Committee for Concerted Peace Efforts, and Americans United for World Organization.

In 1947 to 1948, he was also a member of the executive board of the Committee for the Marshall Plan.

Eichelberger died in 1980.

Works

Eichelberger wrote many books on the United Nations.

Peaceful change, the alternative to war; a survey prepared for the National Peace Conference Campaign for World Economic Cooperation with William T. Stone (New York: Foreign Policy Association, c1937) Proposals for the United Nations charter; what was done at Dumbarton Oaks (New York: Commission to Study the Organization of Peace, 1944) Time has come for action (New York: Commission to study the organization of peace, 1944) United nations charter; what was done at San Francisco (New York: American association for the United Nations, 1945) UN: the first ten years (New York: Harper, 1955) UN: the first fifteen years (New York: Harper, 1960) UN: the first twenty years (New York: Harper & Row, 1965) UN: The first twenty-five years (New York, Harper & Row, 1970) Organizing for peace : a personal history of the founding of the United Nations (New York: Harper & Row, c1977)