Doctor Hu Shih was the most remarkable Chinese intellectual of the 20th century. He was the leading pioneer of vernacular, rather than classical, Chinese. It was widely adopted by schools and the media during the 1920s. His lectures at Beijing University and elsewhere, books and articles influenced tens of thousands of Chinese. From 1938-1942, he served as China's ambassador in Washington DC and played a key role in persuading President Franklin Roosevelt to enter World War Two on the Chinese side.