Editing Lionel Curtis (section)

==Chatham House and The Council on Foreign Relations==

In 1919 Curtis made a proposal to the British and American delegates attending the [[Paris Peace Conference, 1919|Paris Peace Conference]] at a meeting on 30 May 1919 at the [[The Peninsula Paris|Hotel Majestic]]. Curtis addressed the meeting and strongly believed that the conference had illustrated the pressing need for the formation of an informed international research body for expert analysis of foreign affairs that could have advised on the matters the delegates had had before them and had been required to decide upon. Curtis's proposal to the meeting was that an Anglo-American "Institute of International Affairs" should be founded with offices in Britain and the US and this was warmly accepted by the British and United States delegates. 

However in the end it actually resulted in the formation of two sister organisations with the foundation of a British Institute, later the [[Royal Institute of International Affairs]] regularly now known as [[Chatham House]], on 5 July 1920 in London and the [[Council on Foreign Relations]] in New York one year later on July 29, 1921.{{sfn|Lavin|1995|p={{pn|date=January 2025}}}}<ref>Edgar Trevor Williams, A. F. Madden, David Kenneth Fieldhouse. Oxford and the Idea of Commonwealth. Routledge, 1982. (Pages 39, 98)</ref> 

In a revealing letter written 1932, [[Whitney Shepardson]], a US delegate at the Peace Conference, a participant at the meeting at the Hotel Majestic and a founding member of the US Council on Foreign Relations wrote to [[Ivison Macadam]] at Chatham House about Curtis,<blockquote>'' " He's like the Hound of Heaven. Or Jacob wrestling the angel. There was some talk at Council [on Foreign Relations] Directors' meeting today about Chatham House and its resources. Craveth said that Chatham House had been lucky in having one or two 'angels' to give it money. I said, 'Yes, but what's more important they had a Jacob in the shape of Lionel Curtis to wrestle with these angels saying "I will not let thee go until thou bless me!"'''<ref>Shepardson to Ivison Macadam, 3 Nov 1932, Bodleian MSS Eng. Hist. c 872. Quoted in ''From Empire to International Commonwealth: A Biography of Lionel Curtis'', Deborah Lavin, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1995</ref></blockquote> 
Curtis remained a driving force within Chatham House and in international movements and conferences around the world until very late in his life but preferred to give credit to others.