Not many col­lec­tions in the Pub­lic Pol­icy Papers at Mudd Man­u­script Library con­tain audio­vi­sual mate­ri­als. John Van Antwerp MacMurray’s films of China, which were fea­tured over the past nine weeks, and the Amer­i­can Civil Lib­er­ties Union records are an excep­tion. So we were very excited when a preser­va­tion sur­vey led to the dis­cov­ery of an unla­beled film reel in one of the most researched col­lec­tions: the papers of John Fos­ter Dulles, Sec­re­tary of State under Pres­i­dent Dwight Eisen­hower from 1953 until his death in 1959. But the can­is­ter smelled nasty, a sign that it con­tained highly com­bustible nitrate film.

The film, how­ever, was in sta­ble enough con­di­tion to be dig­i­tized. It turned out to be a Pathé news­reel from around 1934, in which a very young Dulles, an inter­na­tional lawyer at the time who served as Amer­i­can rep­re­sen­ta­tive at the Ger­man Debt Con­fer­ences of 1933–1934, dis­cusses France’s “war debts.” France was one of the many Euro­pean nations who were indebted to the US Trea­sury for loans made dur­ing and imme­di­ately after World War I (a total of over 10 bil­lion dol­lars for all coun­tries). Dulles had par­tic­i­pated in the Amer­i­can Com­mis­sion to Nego­ti­ate Peace in Ver­sailles (1918–1919), and in the Repa­ra­tions Com­mis­sion (1919).

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