ABSTRACT

World War II had ended victoriously in Europe, and newspapers were crammed with pictures of American soldiers jubilantly shaking hands with their Soviet allies at the river Elbe. But in San Francisco a new world order was taking shape as Woodrow Wilson's dream of a League of Nations was fast becoming a reality. It is rather the duty of those powerful nations to assume the responsibility for leadership toward a world of peace". Across the country other candidates were discovering the potency of the communist issue. Shortly after winning the Democratic congressional nomination, John F. Kennedy (JFK) found himself on a plane with George Lanigan, a lawyer who had backed one of JFK's primary opponents. The propulsion of communism to a central place in American politics was accompanied by the discarding of old nostrums about the "American way of life".