The United States–Mexico Commission. Standing from left to right are: Stephen Bonsal, Attache of the State Department and Advisor to the American Commission; American Secretary of State
Robert Lansing;
Eliseo Arredondo, the Mexican ambassador designate, and
Leo Stanton Rowe, the Secretary to the American Commission. Sitting from left to right are
John Mott of
New York City; Judge
George Gray of
Wilmington, Delaware; Secretary of the Interior
Franklin Knight Lane;
Luis Cabrera Lobato, chairman of the Mexican delegation and Secretary of the Treasury of Mexico,
Alberto J. Pani, President of the National Railways of Mexico; and
Ignacio Bonillas, Minister of Communications and Public Works.. The image was taken at the Biltmore Hotel in New York City on September 9, 1916.
Stephen Bonsal (March 29, 1865 – June 8, 1951) was an American journalist,
war correspondent, author, diplomat, and translator, who won the 1945
Pulitzer Prize for History.
Early life and education
Bonsal was born in
Baltimore, Maryland, in 1865. He was educated at
St. Paul's School in
Concord, New Hampshire. He continued his studies in
Heidelberg,
Bonn, and
Vienna. He married Henrietta Fairfax Morris in March 1900.[1] Bonsal traveled extensively. He claimed that he had visited all the countries of Europe, South America, and Asia with the exception of
Persia.[2]
Journalist
Bonsal was later a special correspondent of the New York Herald (1885–1907), reporting the development of military conflicts including:[1]
He was a foreign correspondent for the New York Times in 1910–1911.
Diplomat
In 1891-1896, Bonsal served as secretary and chargé-d'affaire of the US diplomatic missions in Beijing, Seoul and Tokyo. He also served for a short time at the U.S. embassy in Madrid.[1]
Unfinished Business (1944), a diary describing his experiences during the Paris Peace Treaty negotiations and all the Allied infighting and waxing lyrical about the plight of the wounded veterans and their families, won him the 1945
Pulitzer Prize for History.[4]
"No one else has presented the plight of the plain people of Europe, in relation to the strained secrecy of the Conference, and few have written of their agony as does Colonel Bonsal in terms so hardheaded and so poignant," Time magazine reported on his death.
His second son,
Philip Bonsal, was a career diplomat. Another son,
Dudley Bonsal, was a United States District Judge of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York.