The diplomatic and humanitarian measures of the United States to assist the victims of the genocide committed against the Armenian people during the First World War carried over into the post-war period. Although the country ultimately shied away from shouldering a part of the political and military responsibility for maintaining peace in the Near East, the Wilson administration did undertake extensive, detailed studies and made its views known to the Allied Powers as they were drafting the treaty of peace with the defeated Ottoman Empire. The reality of the Armenian Genocide and the plight of the Armenian survivors ran as a strong current in these investigations and recommendations. The voluminous materials on the subject deposited in the United States National Archives make it clear that the two American fact-finding missions sent to the Near East displayed a high degree of professionalism and completed their assignments with impressive thoroughness.

When these American missions set out in 1919 there was still the possibility that the United States would serve in one form or another as a protector and “big brother” of an emerging Armenian state and perhaps the surrounding territories as well. For a time, it seemed that the United States, however reluctantly drawn into the Great War, could not simply retreat to its own shores once the fighting was over.