RECORDS OF THE AMERICAN COMMISSION TO NEGOTIATE PEACE The American Commission To Negotiate Peace, organized in November 1918, consisted of five commissioners plenipotentiary of the United States headed by the President, a secretariat, administrative officers, and technical advisers. In December 1918 its Division of Territorial, Economic, and Political Intelligence absorbed most of the specialists of The Inquiry, a group assembled in the fall of 1917 by Col. Edward M. House at the request of President Wilson to prepare for the peace conference after World War I. The Commission ceased to exist in December 1919, and the Department of State arranged and bound its records. There are many related records among the general records of the Department of State (see RG 59) and the records of the Foreign Service posts of the Department of State (see RG 84). Duplicate copies of many documents are also available at the Library of Congress and the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution, and Peace at Stanford University. See Lawrence E. Gelfand, The Inquiry: American Preparations for Peace, 1917-1919 (New Haven, 1963); and the Department of State, Foreign Relations, 1919: The Paris Peace Conference (13 vols., 1942-47). There are 262 cubic feet of records dated between 1914 and 1937 in this record group. RECORDS OF THE INQUIRY. 191419. 68 lin. ft. These records consist of administrative records; correspondence; special reports and studies; digests of statements by Allied and Entente spokesmen; statistical files; newspaper clippings; 1,178 maps portraying such subjects as ethnology, linguistics, religion, economics, terrain, boundaries, and transportation facilities for parts of Europe, Africa, and the Middle East; and related indexes. GENERAL RECORDS OF THE Arranged according to a decimal classification scheme in 537 volumes, the records include minutes of various councils, plenary sessions, committees, and commissions of the peace conference; minutes of the Conference of Ambassadors, 1920-31, which considered certain political questions following the termination of the peace conference; reports of committees and commissions; telegrams and letters sent and received by the American Commission; instructions to and reports from field missions of the Commission; and memorandums, publications, and pamphlets. Finding aids include a "Key to the Records," which shows how to locate, use, and record the materials and briefly describes them; lists of documents by decimal file number; and a topical card index. RECORDS OF THE DEPARTMENT Included are materials relating to the indexing, binding, and arrangement of the records made by the Division of Communication and Records of the Department, and a record of requests for information from the records. See H. Stephen Helton, comp., Preliminary Inventory of the Records of the American Commission To Negotiate Peace, PI 89 (1955); and James Berton Rhoads, comp., Preliminary Inventory of the Cartographic Records of the American Commission To Negotiate Peace, Pİ 68 (1954). Microfilm Publication: General Records of the American Commission To Negotiate Peace, 19181931, M820, 563 rolls, DP. RECORDS OF INTERDEPARTMENTAL AND (STATE DEPARTMENT) Interdepartmental committees, for which the Department of State provided chairmen or secretarial services, and intradepartmental committees and task forces under the Department performed administrative, policy, advisory, or informational functions within the Department or in liaison with other departments of the executive branch. From 1945 to 1953 a Committee Secretariat in the State Department provided secretarial and recordkeeping services for both interdepartmental and intradepartmental committees. There are 108 cubic feet of records. dated between 1926 and 1960 in this record group. RECORDS OF THE FOREIGN This Commission, established by an act of May 7, 1926, formulated and approved plans for acquiring and using sites and buildings for diplomatic and consular establishments. Its records consist of minutes, authorizations and progress reports on building projects, and correspondence. RECORDS OF THE CLAIMS Established in 1931 to examine Foreign Service personnel claims for personal losses suffered in the line of duty, the Claims Board was discontinued in 1939. Its records consist of minutes and claims lists. RECORDS OF THE COMMITTEE This Committee was established in 1935 to consider relations between the State Department and the National Archives. The records consist of reports, legal opinions, congressional bills, correspondence, memorandums, and records surveys, 1928-37, but chiefly 1935. RECORDS OF THE STANDING LIAISON COMMITTEE. 1938-43. 1 lin. in. The Committee was established in 1938 to treat matters relating to the defense of the Latin American countries. Its records consist only of summaries of staff conferences with representatives of Latin American countries. RECORDS OF THE INTERDEPARTMENTAL PATENT INTERCHANGE COMMITTEE. 1946-60. 3 lin. ft. This Committee was established in 1946 to evaluate the exchange of patents recorded in the records of the BritishAmerican Joint Patent Interchange Committee (see RG 43). The International Patent Interchange Committee was discontinued in 1960. Its records include minutes, personnel reports, congressional correspondence, legal opinions, and documents relating to American and British claims. RECORDS OF THE RECIPROCITY TREATIES. 1933-40. 4 lin. in. This Board was established in the Department of State to study and provide information about trade reciprocity, especially about the economic and political aspects of reciprocity treaty negotiations from 1933 to 1934 and bilateral arrangements with American Republics for mutual defense in 1940. Its records, 1933-34 and 1940, include minutes of the Board subcommittee, records relating to the negotiations of reciprocity treaties with Brazil and Colombia, summaries of 1940 staff conversations with representatives of all the American Republics except Panama to establish a bilateral basis for cooperation among their armed forces, and excerpts from the Democratic platform of 1932 and from the campaign speeches of Franklin D. Roosevelt regarding reciprocity. RECORDS OF THE The Committee of Executive Departments and Independent Agencies Tc Consider the Question of Cooperation With the American Republics, established in 1938, was successively renamed the Committee on Cooperation With the American Republics, the Interdepartmental Committee on Cooperation With the American Republics, the Interdepartmental Committee on Scientific and Cultural Cooperation, the Interdepartmental Advisory Committee on Technical Assistance, and, in 1950, the InterdeAdvisory Council partmental Technological Cooperation. Its records include minutes of meetings, memorandums, correspondence, and other records relating to budgets and appropriations, international conferences, scientific and technological investigations, and agency projects and scientific and cultural exchange programs with the American Republics, the Philippines, and other countries. RECORDS OF THE INTERDEPARTMENTAL COMMITTEE ON THE PROCLAIMED LIST. 1941-46. 29 lin. ft. This Committee, established in 1941, on compiled and published the Proclaimed List of Certain Blocked Nationals (containing names of persons suspected of aiding hostile countries or nationals). The Division of World Trade Intelligence, established in the Department of State in 1941, kept the records of the Committee; collected, evaluated, and organized biographic data; and applied restrictions on the trade and financial activities of persons on the Proclaimed List. The Division later became part of the Board of Economic Operations and successor economic offices in the Department of State. It was renamed the Division of Economic Security Controls on March 1, 1945, was transferred to the Office of Economic Security Policy on October 20, 1945, and was discontinued in 1946. The records include a printed set of the "Proclaimed List of Certain Blocked Nationals," with 10 revisions and a record set of changes in the list; case files; memorandums and working drafts; procedural notes; and an index to the list of blocked nationals. RECORDS OF THE STATE-WAR- Established in December 1944 to reconcile views of officials of the three Departments and to formulate their politico-military policies, this Committee prepared such policies for occupying and controlling Japan, Germany, and Austria, and also prepared position papers for use by the United States at international conferences; made studies and recommendations for the postwar downgrading and declassifying of security-classified records; and reviewed directives and procedures for seizing enemy records. It was renamed the State-War-Navy-Air Force Coordinating Committee in 1947 and was terminated in June 1949. Its records consist of minutes, agenda, decisions, rosters, reports, memorandums, letters of subcommittees that include histories of dealings with each enemy country, and indexes to the records. SPECIFIC RESTRICTIONS Records: All records less than 30 years old. Restrictions: They may be used for official use by officers and employees of the U. S. Government only with the permission of the Department of State. Specified by: Department of State. DEPARTMENT OF THE TREASURY GENERAL RECORDS OF THE DEPARTMENT OF THE TREASURY (RECORD GROUP 56) The Department of the Treasury was established by an act of September 2, 1789, which directed the Secretary of the Treasury to prepare plans for improving and managing revenues and supporting public credit, prepare and report revenue and expenditure estimates, superintend the collection of revenues, decide on forms for keeping and stating accounts and making returns, and grant all warrants for money issued from the Treasury. The functions of settling accounts and countersigning warrants for the War and Navy Departments those were performed in Departments from 1792 and 1798, respectively, until the responsibilities were returned in 1817 to the Treasury Department. An auditor who functioned as a Post Office official audited and settled accounts for the Post Office Department from 1836 to 1921. Functions relating to the settlement and adjustment of accounts were transferred to the General Accounting Office by the Budget and Accounting Act of 1921; those relating to the preparation of expenditure estimates were transferred to the Executive Office of the President in 1939. This record group includes records of the Office of the Secretary and its subdivisions and those of units performing service functions for the entire Department. There are 4,027 cubic feet of records dated between 1775 and 1968 in this record group. GENERAL RECORDS OF THE OFFICE OF THE SECRETARY. 1789-1968, with a few dated as early as 1775. Correspondence, with indexes and registers. 1789-1935. 2,342 lin. ft. Consists primarily of many separate series of letters received, 1833-1912, and letters sent, 1833-1909. The series dated from 1789 to 1833 are copies of letters received and sent solicited by the Department from its field offices to fill gaps in the Department's records after a fire in 1833. The letters dated to 1935 are copies of letters sent by the Bookkeeping and Warrants Division, chiefly concerning claims. The main series are arranged according to office-the President, heads of executive departments and bureaus, the Congress, the judiciary, and private individuals-and/or by function-customs, internal revenue, banks and banking, public lands, claims, and personnel appointments. When a function attained bureau status the related correspondence accumulated in the Secretary's Office was generally transferred to the newly created bureau. When a function or bureau was transferred to another department, the accumulated records were transferred to that department. Central Files. 1917-56. 235 lin. ft. A subject-classified correspondence file that includes records of the Secretary, Under Secretaries, Assistant Secretaries, Assistant to the Secretary, and the |