ABSTRACT
The new Secretary General of the IPR, Edward Carter, took office in 1933, and remained in the post until 1946. This was the heyday of the IPR. Carter had a strong personality, and was a very able INGO officer. Born the son of a minister in Lawrence, Massachusetts, in 1878, his involvement with the international YMCA student movement began when he was at Harvard College in 1900. His first overseas post was Secretary of the YMCA in Calcutta in 1902, and he continued to be active in international YMCA activities in Asia, Europe and the United States. He was a founding member of the IPR, Secretary of the ACIPR in 1926–33 and Secretary General of the ISIPR in 1933–46. Between 1926 and 1946, for twenty of the thirty-six-year history of the IPR, he was a central figure at the ACIPR and the ISIPR. In the late 1940s, Carter became a target of criticism for his conduct at the ISIPR during World War II, which was followed by a McCarthyist attack. Despite this prominence and publicity, Carter remains an obscure figure. There is no biography, except for an account of his activities as Chief Secretary of the YMCA’s American Expeditionary Force in Paris in 1917–19 (during World War I) and a brief entry in Biographical Dictionary of Internationalists. 1
