A Journalist's Diplomatic Mission—Ray Stannard Baker's World War I Diary

At the height of World War I, in the winter of 1917 1918, one of the Progressive era s most successful muckracking journalists, Ray Stannard Baker (1870 1946), set out on a special mission to Europe on behalf of the Wilson administration. While posing as a foreign correspondent for the New Republic and the New York World, Baker assessed public opinion in Europe about the war and post-war settlement. American officials in the White House and State Department held Baker s wide-ranging, trenchant reports in high regard. After the war, Baker remained in government service as the president s press secretary at the Paris Peace Conference, where the Allied victors dictated the peace terms to the defeated Central Powers. Baker s position gave him an extraordinary vantage point from which to view history in the making. He kept a voluminous diary of his service to the president, beginning with his voyage to Europe and lasting through his time as press secretary. Unlike Baker s published books about Wilson, leavened by much reflection, his diary allows modern readers unfiltered impressions for key moments in history by a thoughtful, inside observer. Published here for the first time, this long-neglected source includes an introduction by John Maxwell Hamilton and Robert Mann, placing Baker and his diary into historical context. A Journalist s Diplomatic Mission will fascinate scholars and general readers alike.

Robert Mann holds the Manship Chair in Mass Communication and is director of the Reilly Center for Media & Public Affairs in the Manship School of Mass Communication at Louisiana State University.