Page 1 of a U.S. Information Agency Atoms for Peace set, printed as a supplement to Free World, June 1956. It sets a drawn portrait beside a quotation from President Eisenhower's 8 December 1953 address to the UN General Assembly (NAID 6948910).
What the sheet prints
A blue page with a drawn portrait at left, three stacked words in large capitals, and an atom symbol inside a laurel wreath. The text under the portrait is a passage from a speech, credited by date and place. The foot of the sheet says it is a supplement to a magazine, Free World, and the number 1 marks it as the opening page of a set.
...the United States pledges before you -- and therefore before the world -- its determination to help solve the fearful atomic dilemma, to devote its entire heart and mind to find the way by which the miraculous inventiveness of man shall not be dedicated to his death, but consecrated to his life.
DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER
President of the United States
Addressing the General Assembly of the United Nations, December 8, 1953
ATOMS FOR PEACE
SUPPLEMENT TO Free World VOLUME V - No 6 JUNE - 1956
Who issued it
The catalog puts the sheet in Record Group 306, the U.S. Information Agency series of posters sent to posts in Asia, Latin America and the Middle East (series NAID 5051202). The catalog date is 10 April 1956, which is earlier than the June 1956 issue line printed on the page. This page reports both and does not resolve them. The record does not name the post that hung it.
How to read it
The method is plain: the President's own words, spoken at the UN, carry the message. Nothing on page 1 describes a reactor, a treaty or a budget. It is a promise, set in type two and a half years after it was made. A reader in 1956 could not check the promise against results from this page alone. The later pages of the set, which the archive titles after a Philippine treaty, students, atomic energy, a hospital and factory, and farms, are where any evidence would have to sit.
The quotation deserves to be read on its own terms. A president told the world his country would put atomic science to work for life rather than death. Whether the record matched the pledge is a question for evidence, not for a poster. For the earlier wartime poster office, see the Office of War Information hub.
Sources
- FRAME object record, Atoms for Peace poster, page 1: Eisenhower pledge. Catalog date April 10, 1956.
- U.S. National Archives, Record Group 306, Posters Distributed in Asia, Latin America, Middle East (series NAID 5051202), item NAID 6948910, 306-PPB-81a, catalog.archives.gov. Rights as recorded: public domain (U.S. government work).
