Owen Lattimore

OWEN LATTIMORE is the only American who, when traveling in the vast frontier regions between China and Russia, front Manchuria to Central Asia, has the advantage of being able to speak Chinese and Russian as well as Mongol, He and his wife, Eleanor Holgate Lattimore, first reported on Mongolia and Turkistan in the ATLANTIC in the 1920s. Their visit to Mongolia in 1961 was made possible by grants from the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research and from the American Philosophical Society; and the book emerging from their trip, NOMADS AND COMMISSARS,will be published by the Oxford University Press.

The incarceration of the American consul at Mukden, President Truman has characterized as an outrage; it leaves no doubt of the determination with which the Chinese Communists are standing up to us. It e need a new policy, and for its definition the Atlantic turns to OWEN LATTIMORE, who has spent more than two decades in China, Japan, and the borderland between China and Russia. In 1943-1944 he was Deputy Director of the OWI in charge of the Far Eastern Division; today he is head of the Page School of International Relations. His new book, Pivot of Asia, will appear this spring under the Atlantic-Little, Brown imprint.

One of our lending authorities on Far Eastern affairs, OWEN LATTIMORE has spent more than two decades traveling in and writing about China, Japan, and the border territories between China and Russia. In 1941 and 1942 he served as adviser to Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek, and on his return became Deputy Director of OWI in charge of the Far Eastern Division. Today he directs the Page School of International Relations at Johns Hopkins. The risk we run in trying to make Japan “the workshop of Asia” is told unsparingly in this chapter from his new book. The Situation in Vsia, appearing this month under the Atlantic-Little, Drown imprint.

One of our leading authorities on Far Eastern affairs, OWEN LATTIMORE has spent more than tiro decades traveling in and writing about China and those harder territories between China and Russia, In 1941 and 1942 he served as adviser to Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek on the recommendation of President Roosevelt, and on his return became Deputy Director of OWI in charge of the Far Eastern Division. Today he directs the Page School of International Relations at Johns Hopkins. The masterly survey which follows and which he read at the annual meeting of the American Historical Society will form part of his new book on the crisis in Asia.

Historian and political scientist, OWEN LATTIMORE is Director of the Page School of International Relations at the Johns Hopkins University. A native of one of Toynbee’s Civilizations. the Western, he is also naturalized in two others, that of China and that of the Steppe Nomads. He is one of the recognized authorities on the borderline between China and Russia, and his volumes of history and travel — Desert Road to Turkestan, Inner Asian Frontiers of China, and Mongol Journeys — afford him the perspective with which to appraise those two far-ranging historians of our time, Spengler and Toynbee.