He was a grandson of John Watson Foster, Secretary of State 
        under President Benjamin Harrison, and nephew of Robert Lansing,
        Secretary of State under Woodrow Wilson. In 1908 he graduated at
        Princeton; in 1911 was admitted to the bar and, in 1919, was counsel
        to the U.S. delegation to the Paris Peace Conference.
             Soon he achieved prominence as an international lawyer and 
        attended various international conferences in the interwar years. In
        1945 he was appointed advisor to the U.S. delegation at the San
        Francisco Conference and, from 1945 till 1949, served as a U. S.
        Delegate to the United Nations General Assembly. In 1949 he was
        appointed to finish the unexpired term of Senator Robert F. Wagner of
        New York, but, in 1950, was defeated in a general election for the
        seat.
             In 1951, as ambassador at large, Dulles negotiated the peace
        treaty with Japan; and, in 1953, was appointed Secretary of State by
        Dwight D. Eisenhower. He emphasized the collective security of the
        United States and its allies and the development of nuclear weapons
        for "massive retaliation" in case of attack. Regarding Communism as a
        moral evil to be resisted at any cost, he firmly upheld the Chinese
        Nationalist defense of Matsu and Quemoy off the coast of Communist
        China and initiated the policy of strong U. S. backing for the South
        Vietnamese regime of Ngo Dinh Diem.
            Dulles helped develop the Eisenhower doctrine of economic and
        military aid to maintain the independence of Middle Eastern countries;
        under its terms U. S. forces were sent to the Lebanon in 1958. Dulles
        resigned from office a month before his death. He wrote "War, Peace
        and Change" (1939) and "War or Peace" (1950).
 

Source:: The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition, 2001.