The Foreign Service Journal, July-August 2009

charge of the department, in 1956 Bat- tle resigned to work for Humelsine, who was now an employee of the Rock- efellers, as vice president of the Colo- nial Williamsburg Foundation. In 1961 Battle came back into the Foreign Service, once again as special assistant to the Secretary of State, but with the additional title of executive secretary of the State Department. However, the Dean this time was Rusk, not Acheson. The relationship did not work well, and one senses that Battle left the position with a sigh of relief to become, in June 1962, assistant secre- tary of State for educational and cul- tural affairs. An excellent account of his productive tenure in that position can be found in Richard Arndt’s book, The First Resort of Kings: American Cul- tural Diplomacy in the Twentieth Cen- tury (Potomac Books, 2005). The best source for understanding what Battle himself, shortly after leav- ing the Foreign Service in October 1968, called “a rather odd career,” is the series of oral histories in which he took part. Together, they add up to a sub- stantial memoir, which is candid, often self-deprecating and frequently amus- ing. The series can be accessed online at the Truman and Kennedy Presiden- tial Library Web sites (www.truman library.org/oralhist/battle.htm; www.jfk library.org/Historical+Resources/Archi ves/Summaries/col_battle_l.htm) and, in the case of his two interviews for the Johnson Library, on theWeb site of the Foreign Affairs Oral History Collection of the Association for Diplomatic Stud- ies and Training (http://lcweb2.loc.gov/ ammem/collections/diplomacy/). Bat- tle was also generous in granting inter- views to historians, and has been cited by writers such as Robert Beisner, Wal- ter Issacson, David Halberstam and Michael Oren as an accurate and reli- able source for events and personalities of the 1950s and 1960s. In those interviews, Battle is not afraid to turn his critical faculties upon himself: “I was ill-equipped for a lot of the things that came my way in my diplomatic career, and I don’t hide it.” He even expresses doubt about the ap- propriateness of his assignment as am- bassador to Egypt (from September J U LY- A U G U S T 2 0 0 9 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 43 To Dean Acheson’s credit, he expected Battle to demonstrate independence of mind and spirit in their working relationship.