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Research Staff Readies Marshall Material Under Dr. Pogue

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[[caption]] Dr. Forrest C. Pogue Director of the Research Center [[/caption]]

The George C. Marshall Research Center program began in August 1956 with the appointment of Dr. Forrest C. Pogue as director. Dr. Pogue was a combat historian and author of several books including The Supreme Command, official Army history of Eisenhower's operations in Northwest Europe. He was assigned the tasks of collecting, indexing and organizing the correspondence and documents relating to General Marshall, interviewing the General, and writing his biography. In addition, he was to acquire material for the Library-Museum and to make plans for expanding the program of the Research Center once a building was provided for the project. A gift of $150,000 from John D. Rockefeller, Jr., provided the funds for this work which, while it was devoted principally to research, included all the activities of the Marshall Foundation.

From the beginning of the George C. Marshall Research Foundation, incorporated as early as 1953 to receive the papers and souvenirs of General Marshall and to raise funds for the expansion of the research program and the building of a Library-Museum, the research feature was stressed. President Truman in urging the establishment of the Foundation emphasized the importance of preserving the General's papers and making them available to scholars. The aim was to add to some 200,000 documents and letters donated by General Marshall at least another 200,000 selected documents from official files, thus bringing together under one roof the chief collection of papers in the country dealing with General Marshall as soldier and statesman. Further, the Director and a small trained staff were expected to use the collection as the basis for a number of studies on General Marshall and his times, in addition to making available to writers key documents for interpreting the first half of the twentieth century.

Incorporators of the Marshall Foundation also foresaw the prospect of a fund which would encourage the writing and publication of monographs on General Marshall and his times through scholarships or grants in aid of publication. In was hoped that conferences could be held at the Research Center from time to time in order to stimulate study of the Marshall period. Meanwhile, the Research Center would continue to gather material on questions of war and peace in which Marshall had been interested, such as the development of the Office of Chief of Staff of the Army, unification of the armed services, the Marshall Plan, the problem of China, World War II history, United States participation in World War I, and the like. Especially, it was hoped that the Director and his staff could use the experience they had gained in the collection of the sources and in the preparation of the biography to offer direction to graduate students who wished to draw on the Marshall papers for their theses and dissertations.

During the first year of the program, Dr. Pogue recorded on tape more than forty hours of interviews with General Marshall and added 15-18 hours of interview material in the form of notes and stenographic transcript. This program was then expanded to include more than 250 former associates of the General's. Since the General's death in 1959, the chief priority of the Research Center has been given to the completion of a three-volume biography of the General.

In 1957, Miss Euguenia Lejeune and Mrs. Arline van B. Pratt joined the staff of the Research Center - Miss Lejeune as librarian and administrative assistant and Mrs. Pratt as research assistant. Miss Lejeune, a Major in the Marine Corps Reserve and daughter of General J.A. Lejeune, for nine years Commandant of the United States Marine Corp and, later, for eight years, Superintendent of the Virginia Military Institute, was formerly librarian of the Marine Corps Schools Library, Quantico, Virginia, and then a reference librarian, Armed Forces Staff College, Norfolk, Virginia. Mrs. Pratt has worked as research assistant to W.L. Langer and S. Foster Gleason in the preparation of their massive volumes on United States diplomacy leading to World War II and to Herbert Feis in the writing of his books dealing with American diplomacy in the 1930s and 1940s. Just prior to joining the Research Center staff, she had helped for a year to select papers of Secretary of State John Foster Dulles to be microfilmed for the Princeton University Library collection.

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Material Sought
The George C. Marshall Research Center would welcome gifts of military periodicals (bound or unbound), books on military and foreign affairs, maps of World War I and II, and photographs, letters or manuscripts dealing with General Marshall and his times. It is requested that information be sent to Dr. Forrest C. Pogue, George C. Marshall Research Center, Box 831, Lexington, Virginia, stating nature of proposed donation to avoid duplication of material. If material is desired, postage will be paid for shipment.
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Other research assistants have included: Dr. E. M. Coffman, now working on a biography of General Peyton C. March, U.S. Chief of Staff in World War I, and a history of World War I, who left the Center to join the faculty of the University of Wisconsin; Mrs. Helen Bailey, formerly with the Office of the Chief of Military History; and John Gauntlett, formerly of the Legislative Reference Service, now completing work on his doctorate at the University of Maryland. Myles Marken of the Office of the Chief of Military History has worked part time in selecting papers from World War I files in the National Archives. Other members of the staff who have done important