The Encyclopedia Americana (1920)/Speer, Robert Elliot

SPEER, Robert Elliot, American religious leader and foreign missions secretary: b. Huntingdon, Pa., 10 Sept. 1867. He was graduated at Princeton University in 1889, later studied at the Theological Seminary there, and since 1891 he has been secretary to the Presbyterian Board of Foreign Missions. He made tours of the foreign missionary fields in China, India, Japan and Korea in 1896-97; in South America in 1909; and in Japan, China, Siam and the Philippines in 1915. He is widely known in missionary circles as an effective organizer. Author of ‘Presbyterian Foreign Missions’ (1901); ‘Missions and Modern History’ (2 vols., 1904); ‘Christianity and the Nations’ (1910); ‘South American Problems’; ‘John's Gospel’ (1915), etc.