Massachusetts senator Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr., joined the Senate in 1937, continuing a family tradition of public service. Following graduation from Harvard University, Lodge pursued a career in journalism before entering politics. In 1936 he won a seat in the U.S. Senate, where he became a Republican spokesman for an internationalist foreign policy. During World War II Lodge took a leave of absence from the Senate to serve in the army in 1942. By the time he requested a second leave for military service in 1944, an order from Secretary of War Henry Stimson had barred current members of Congress from active military duty, forcing Lodge to resign his Senate seat in order to continue military service. “Given my age and training,” he informed the Senate on February 4, 1944, “I must henceforth serve my country as a combat soldier in the Army.” Elected again in 1946, he returned to the Senate after the war. When he lost his reelection bid to John F. Kennedy in 1952, Lodge began a diplomatic career that lasted nearly three decades, including service as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations in the 1950s, as ambassador to Vietnam in the 1960s, and as envoy to the Vatican in the 1970s.
