Spooner Street Easton

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# Acknowledgements

As the Second World War was running its course in both Europe and the North Atlantic and the increasingly dubious prospects of finding an interwar peace in the South Atlantic were not to everyone's liking, the Anglo-American and allied governments of the United Nations decided that another one should be founded in a neutral territory. The decision was made to find a location that would be compatible with all interests. The leading contenders – Rio de Janeiro, now Brazil; Strasbourg, now France; and The Hague, in the Netherlands – became places which were both neutral but would also be in the advantageous position of being on the Atlantic seaboard of the Allies. The main consideration for the location was that it would be situated between Great Britain, the Netherlands, and France, well away from neutral Spain, the island of Guernsey, and, in the event, the great naval contestings of 1940. But Rio de Janeiro was built at the urging of a high official of the United Nations.

Once that situation was decided and the location decided, the major job was the provisioning of the place. The story begins in Rio, where a whole series of men and women were taken up to help in the building of the City of Rio, which was to become the focal point of the United Nations for years to come – the world's second largest city (with more than 2,000,000 people) built according to plans of Adolfo Lutz and Graça Maciel. A great effort was put into the reconstruction of the city, which remains the principal city of the state of Rio Grande do Sul, and an impressive trail of monographs, books, blueprints, and lists of photographs on those links will undoubtedly assist the reader of this book in identifying and ascertaining the basic facts.

The actual construction of the City was further complicated by a dispute between the federal states (brasileiros – Brazilians) and the provinces (regiões – French-speaking provinces), since Brasília was proposing to give the city a border on both sides of its dividing line, thereby trying to make it similar in the main to the large scale layout of the recently constructed Paris.