John Foster Dulles

He married Janet Pomeroy Avery on June 26, 1912.

His eldest son John W.F. Dulles was a professor at the ‘University of Texas’ at Austin. His younger son Avery Dulles, a converted Roman Catholic, was the first American theologian to serve as a Cardinal. His daughter Lillias Dulles Hinshaw was a Presbyterian minister.

Allen Welsh Dulles, his younger brother worked as the Director of ‘Central Intelligence’. His sister Eleanor Lansing Dulles who served the State Department played a significant role in the effective reconstruction of the economy of Europe post war.

John Foster Dulles was born on February 25, 1888, to Allen Macy Dulles and Edith Dulles in Washington, D.C.

He was born in a family that was well-known for its political associations. While his father was a Presbyterian minister, his paternal grandfather John Welsh Dulles was a Presbyterian missionary in India. His maternal grandfather John W. Foster and his uncle Robert Lansing served as ‘Secretary of State’ under Benjamin Harrison and Woodrow Wilson respectively.

He completed his preliminary education in public schools in New York’s Watertown.

He joined the ‘Princeton University’ and graduated as a Phi Beta Kappa member in 1908.

He attended the ‘Sorbonne’ in Paris and thereafter studied in Washington, D.C at ‘The George Washington University Law School’ for two years.

In 1911, John Foster Dulles joined ‘Sullivan and Cromwell’, an international law firm at Wall Street and here he specialized in international law.

At the time of World War I, he failed to join the U.S. Army due to poor eyesight. However, he was commissioned by the Army as a Major of the ‘War Industries Board’.

In 1918, he was inducted as a legal counsel by President Woodrow Wilson in the U.S. delegation for the ‘Versailles Peace Conference’. He worked under his uncle Robert Lansing, who was the then Secretary of State. As a junior diplomat, he made a mark by contesting vehemently against imposition of reparations on Germany. He later served as a ‘War Reparations Committee’ member.

He was an early member of the ‘League of Free Nations Associations’ later called the ‘Foreign Policy Association’. The association advocated membership of the Americans in the ‘League of Nations’.

In 1920, he became a partner in the law firm ‘Sullivan and Cromwell’. He was instrumental in designing the ‘Dawes Plan’ that lowered reparation payments of Germany. He ensured that American firms lend money to the states and private companies of Germany to mitigate the reparation problem temporarily. The profits of such investments were sent to France and Britain as reparation money which was again used by these two countries to repay war loans taken from the United States.

In 1954 he was named ‘Man of the Year’ by Time Magazine.

Many places and institutions including the ‘Washington Dulles International Airport’ in Dulles, Virginia, the ‘John Foster Dulles Elementary School’ in Cincinnati, Ohio and the ‘Dulles Avenue’ at Sugar Land, Texas, were named after him as a mark of honour.