Carnegie

by Peter Krass

  The most crucial element in the preparations for the summit with the kaiser was not the handling of Roosevelt’s travel schedule, but the words he would speak, the position he would take. It could not be that of the gung ho expansionist. As early as December, more than five months before the tête-a-tête, Carnegie, along with Root, started feeding Roosevelt advice on how he should conduct himself: not as a dictator of policy, but as a leader conferring with other leaders on equal terms. “The only question,” Carnegie wrote, “is whether the idea of promoting World Peace stirs you. If it does, you will not fail, but even failure in such a cause would be noble.”17

  From Nairobi, an uncharacteristically submissive Roosevelt responded, “I entirely agree with the views you and Root hold. Now, can’t you get Root to put in writing, in a letter to you of which you could send a copy to me, these views? It would offer the way of all others for my introduction of the matter with the Kaiser. Root’s gift of phrasing things is unequalled.”18

  Although Roosevelt specifically asked for a letter from Root, Carnegie couldn’t restrain himself from providing his own opinion. Ever presumptuous, he never did learn the art of subtlety as indicated by his opening line: “In reply to yours, here is what I should say to His Imperial Majesty, were I in your place.” He advised Roosevelt to open his impending conversation with the kaiser by complimenting him for talking and acting peace, “for your hands are giltless of shedding human blood during your long reign.” Then he should suggest to the kaiser that he be the one to officially propose a League of Peace, and to say to him, “Your Majesty, I have felt it to be my duty to lay this matter before you in the hope that you would recognize the holy mission of bringing Peace to the world rest upon you. No service ever man has rendered to man since the world began equals this.” By laying the peace mission squarely on the kaiser and by saying he was the only man capable of succeeding, Carnegie hoped it would shame him into accepting the mission. “Let me assure you, dear Mr. Roosevelt,” he concluded, “that the Emperor can be trusted. I believe in him. He is a true man and means what he says, although probably inclined to rank physical before moral force.”19 (If only Carnegie were as suspicious as he had been in dealing with the Pennsylvania Railroad and Illinois Steel.)

  A full month later, Root’s letter followed. He again cautioned Roosevelt to not appear to be lecturing Europe on its duties; and, echoing Carnegie’s sentiments, he suggested telling the emperor that a great opportunity had been presented. If he ignored it, he would be just another forgotten figure of history; whereas if he seized it, he would render a service toward peace and would win everlasting renown.20

  All the pieces appeared to be falling into place, concluding with a debriefing with Britain’s leaders at the chosen site of Wrest Park in London. Yet Roosevelt’s overly responsive desire to please was suspect. While in colonial Africa, had the onetime assistant secretary of the navy, Rough Rider, expansionist, and imperialist finally recognized the dire political situation in Europe, with each country seeking more foreign treasures to plunder and threatening world war in the process? Or was he simply not in the mood to spar with Carnegie? Confident there were no hitches, in February 1910 Carnegie left for a vacation in the Southwest, but the next month he received a disturbing letter from Roosevelt. No longer was he playing the submissive good guy, and he had serious reservations about meeting the kaiser.

  After confirming he would travel to Germany to meet Wilhelm at his convenience, Roosevelt added, “Now, however for some reservations. First, and least important, personal. I want to go home! I am homesick for my own land and my own people! Of course it is Mrs. Roosevelt I most want to see; but I want to see my two youngest boys; I want to see my own house, my own books and trees, the sunset over the sound from the window in the north room, the people with whom I have worked, who think my thoughts and speak my speech. So far from Mrs. Roosevelt’s wishing to see more of Europe, she has written me that even if I can’t get home in June she’ll have to—and I am not going to be separated from her again.”

  More potent, Roosevelt declared he would not align himself with the peace-at-any-price men, such as Carnegie’s friend William Stead (and Carnegie for that matter), whose ideas on unconditional arbitration Roosevelt considered to be “rarely better than silly; and the only reason that the men themselves are not exceedingly mischievous is that they are well-nigh impotent for either good or evil.” While he agreed with the basic concept of a League of Peace, he also harbored serious reservations about pursuing any diplomacy not supported by the United States. “I cannot work for a policy which I think our country might repudiate; I cannot work for anything that does not represent some real progress; and it is useless to expect to accomplish everything at once,” he explained. “But I will do all in my power, all that is feasible, to help in the effort to secure some substantial advance towards the goal.”21 Roosevelt feared he would lack credibility if he pushed a peace platform not endorsed by the Taft administration.

  If he wanted public support from home, Carnegie determined, he would get it. It could hardly be coincidence that Taft, to whose election Carnegie gave $20,000, stood before the Peace and Arbitration Society at the Hotel Astor in New York on March 22 and made an unexpected and unequivocal speech in favor of arbitration to settle all matters of dispute, including those of national honor. The speech was a major coup for Carnegie, who, while on vacation at the Grand Canyon, gushed in a letter to Taft: “Your repeated earnest utterances in favor of International Peace entitle you to rank with Washington, whose first wish was to ‘banish war, the plague of mankind, from the earth.’ . . . If you only prove true to your great promise and propose to Germany and Great Britain at first (other invitations to follow) that they confer confidentially with our country, basing this suggestion upon their repeated declarations that their earnest desire is International Peace, I believe you will succeed . . . and when peace is established, as it finally must be, you would be as clearly the father of Peace on Earth as Washington is father of his country or Lincoln its preserver.”22 Relieved that Roosevelt now had Taft’s public blessing, Carnegie wrote Hill in Berlin, “What a pair T.R. and H.M. to hobnob—well they will love each other like vera brithers and I have faith in both.”23 On the eve of Roosevelt’s summit with the kaiser, however, a wisp of poison slipped into the air.

  With just three weeks to go, in a speech at the Sorbonne in Paris, Roosevelt, now touring Europe, suggestively advocated righteous wars, two words that made Carnegie cringe. After all the preparation and nervous anticipation, was Roosevelt about to stab him? “I notice in your speech at the Sor-bonne,” Carnegie wrote anxiously, “you speak of ‘righteous wars.’ I am sure that upon serious reflection you will no longer be satisfied to send disputes between nations to war for adjustment, the crime of war being inherent. . . . It has no regard for ‘righteous.’ Every citizen in a civilized community is under the reign of law compelled to submit his wrongs to the law for redress. . . . Ponder over this. You have a conscience.”24

  The scolding attempt to influence Roosevelt’s scruples failed. A week before the summit with Kaiser Wilhelm II, in his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech at Christiana (Oslo), Norway, he supported the creation of a League of Peace, believing it would be a masterstroke, but then declared man must fight when faced with infamy rather than submit to it. “No nation deserves to exist if it permits to lose the stern and virile virtues!” he declared in direct opposition to Taft’s New York speech.25 If Carnegie only knew what Roosevelt had told Reid—“There is no type of man for whom I feel a more contemptuous abhorrence than for one who makes a God of mere money-making and at the same time is always yelling out that kind of utterly stupid condemnation of war . . .”—he wouldn’t have been so shocked by Roosevelt’s blunt proclamations.

  But Roosevelt had good reason to take a strong and guarded position. It was partly in response to the belligerent rhetoric filling the German newspapers to rile the public up against the United States and Roosevelt. The German nati
onalists were incensed that Roosevelt might attempt to dictate their responsibilities concerning disarmament and peace. The propaganda was unanticipated by a naive Carnegie and worse than expected by the seasoned Roosevelt, who now believed he would accomplish little with the kaiser.26

  Contrary to Roosevelt’s skepticism, the meeting of two men with the potential to shake the world started very cordially. All precedents were broken when the kaiser invited him (the first civilian to do so) to review field maneuvers of the German army. But their subsequent meetings proved unproductive, and Roosevelt later reflected that “there were many points in international morality where he and I were completely asunder. But at least we agreed in a cordial dislike of shams and of pretense, and therefore in a cordial dislike of the kind of washy movement for international peace with which Carnegie’s name has become so closely associated.”27

  A sign of things to come, King Edward VII died suddenly of heart failure on the eve of Roosevelt’s historic visit, throwing Britain into a state of mourning. “The sad news of the passing of the King saddened us all,” Carnegie wrote Whitelaw Reid. “Mr. Roosevelt’s visit will naturally be greatly changed by the event.”28 Still, Carnegie hoped some political breakthrough might be salvaged if the kaiser and Roosevelt traveled together to the funeral.29 Any optimism for measurable accomplishments was crushed as the London debriefing of Roosevelt was canceled, and a despondent Carnegie, still at Skibo, passed along the news to Reid in London: “The King’s death has changed all and as there is to be no meeting at least for some time there is not need for my running up to London. . . . We will keep out of London hubbub and rest quietly here.”30

  Roosevelt, for his part, made the best of his time in England, anyway. “My last twenty-four hours on England have really been the pleasantest of all, as I spent them with Edward Grey in the valley of the Itchen and the New Forest, listening to bird songs,” he informed Carnegie. Then, after having denigrated Carnegie in the presence of the kaiser, he had the impudence to add, “Well, I wish I could have seen a little more of you. . . . When you reach New York, come out in an auto and take lunch with us in Oyster Bay.”31 A presidential election was only two years away, and Roosevelt had to keep his options open.

  It appeared, for the moment, Carnegie had but one last hope in securing peace: Taft, who had spoken so bravely for unconditional arbitration.

  Nicholas Murray Butler, who was president of the American branch of the Association for International Conciliation, and Hamilton Holt, editor of the Independent, deserved the credit for inspiring Carnegie to make his boldest strike yet for peace. But Carnegie took all the acclaim for himself.

  During discussions at a 1908 New York Peace Society dinner in honor of Elihu Root, Butler and Holt decided to propose to Carnegie the creation of a well-endowed foundation loosely modeled on the Carnegie Institution that worked for the cause of peace. They went so far as to draft a charter, but the concept proved too nebulous for Carnegie. His attitude began to change when, in the summer of 1910, Congress authorized Taft to create a Peace Commission charged with studying the prospects of organizing an international naval force to police the seas. It was a glimmer of hope for Carnegie in what had been a disastrous year to date. From Skibo, he immediately cabled Taft suggesting Butler, Charles W. Eliot, and Seth Low, among others, as candidates for the commission. Apparently Taft wasn’t put off by the intrusion because he considered Carnegie a candidate, too, but then he thought the better of it. “There is a suggestion of Carnegie,” he told Knox, “but Mr. Roosevelt and I both agreed, in discussing it, that he might be a hard man to be responsible for because he talked so much.”32 In mulling over this latest development along with Taft’s position on arbitration, which was now endorsed by Britain’s foreign secretary, Sir Edward Grey, Carnegie decided the time was ripe for a magnanimous gesture toward peace.

  On October 28, Taft, who hoped his peace policy would be his jewel, his legacy that distinguished him from Roosevelt, hosted the Carnegies at the White House for an overnight stay, giving the two men a chance to talk privately about the explosive military buildup in Europe and arbitration treaties.33 Over the course of the evening, Carnegie introduced the Peace Institution concept, and the two men agreed to help each other: Taft would vigorously pursue a series of unprecedented arbitration treaties, and Carnegie would create the organization to support him, a propaganda machine promoting peace. As a sign of good faith, Carnegie wanted Taft to announce publicly his resolve to win ratification of the treaties in his upcoming message to Congress, but wary of showing his hand before Carnegie’s organization was up and running, Taft confided to a White House aide: “The trouble with old Carnegie is, he might secure what he wants in my message and then not give the money. I think I will go a little slow until old Andrew becomes more specific.”34

  Taft’s suspicions were unfounded as Carnegie now adopted the 1908 Butler-Holt idea of a peace institution as his own. “Private. I have a new idea,” he wrote Morley on November 4, “or rather I have decided once for all my course upon action upon a new idea but will take some time before announced—President approves heartily so does Root.”35 Now entered Root, veteran arbitrator and respected man of peace, who became indispensable in helping Carnegie create the specific organization Taft wanted, from focusing its mission to crafting the language in the deed. Sensing time was of the essence, less than two weeks after his meeting with Taft and after frantic shuttling between New York and Washington by Root, on November 11 Carnegie sent a working draft of the deed for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace to Knox, who, along with Taft, approved it.36 As a seventy-fifth birthday present to himself and for dramatic effect, Carnegie decided to publicly announce the creation of the endowment on November 25. “Tomorrow you will be 75 years young!” Butler congratulated him. “What a grand 75 years they have been! Lincoln was a raw-boned young man when you were born & Napoleon had not long been dead. Think of the change! Today Napoleon is unthinkable. Peaceful industry and enlightenment are putting an end to war. Just think how much you have helped it all on, & are helping it on. Thank God for your health & strength & broad vision.”37

  With his end of the bargain well under way, Carnegie wrote Taft a gentle reminder to keep his promise, warning him that to assure his legacy “among the masses” he must take “a grandly bold forward step. Nothing Commonplace will do.” He continued, “Excuse me for presuming to tender counsel, you can justly charge it to an intense desire to see you occupy the Commanding position you have deserved and which entitles you not only to another term—that goes without saying—but to foremost place in history which will be yours if you stand firm in advocacy of the views you have been the first Ruler to declare.”38 How could Taft question his presumption to tender counsel when he had just set aside a $10 million endowment to back the president’s policy? Carnegie was simply too tenacious and too rich to ignore. The deal, however, was an act of calculated desperation by both men. Carnegie desired to rescue Western civilization from the clutches of war, while Taft desired to secure his legacy in history.

  On December 14, the world’s first institution dedicated to peace research and abolishing war was officially established in Washington. Taft was appointed honorary president and Root was appointed president, a post he would hold until 1925. Twenty-eight trustees in total were named, including: Charles W. Eliot, president emeritus of Harvard; Joseph Choate, former ambassador to Great Britain; former secretary of state John W. Foster; Henry S. Pritchett, president of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and former president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Andrew D. White, former ambassador to Germany; Robert S. Woodward, president of the Carnegie Institution; and Luke E. Wright, former ambassador to Japan and secretary of war. “I thought of asking you to be a trustee but this seemed too small for you and besides I feared you might dislike to refuse,” Carnegie wrote Roosevelt, “so I kept you free. If you ever wished to join very easy to arrange.”39 In the final draft of the letter, he del
eted the last line—Roosevelt, he had finally admitted to himself, was not a man of peace. A trusteeship was offered to Knox, who declined, an indication that he wanted to keep his distance from Carnegie.

  The cartoonists had great fun with Carnegie when he endowed the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace with $10 million—no one could comprehend how the money would be spent. (Courtesy of the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh)

  In the deed (still using reformed spelling), Carnegie wrote, “I hav transferred to you as Trustees of the Carnegie Peace Fund, Ten Million Dollars of Five Percent First Mortgage Bonds, the revenue of which is to be administered by you to hasten the abolition of war, the foulest blot upon our civilization. Altho we no longer eat our fellow men, nor torture prisoners, nor sack cities killing their inhabitants, we still kill each other in war like barbarians.” Once war was banished, he stated further, the trustees were then to “consider what is the next degrading evil of evils whose banishment—or what new elevating element or elements if introduced or fathered, or both combined—would most advance the progress, elevation, and happiness of man, and so on from century to century without end.”40

  The Independent called it Carnegie’s greatest gift. Baron d’Estournelles de Constant thanked him on behalf of “the children of all the world.”41 Morley cheered: “This last noble stroke of wisdom and beneficence is the crowning achievement, and is universally recognized for what it is—a real ascent in the double spheres of ideal and practical. . . . Today, my dear Carnegie, you have truly made us, who are your friends, proud of you, including especially one who has been your friend longest of them all, to wit, John Morley.”42 And Taft did indeed hold up his end of the bargain. Three days after the endowment was made legal, on a Saturday evening, he stood before the attendees of the first annual conference of the Society for the Judicial Settlement of International Disputes in the New Willard Hotel in Washington and intimated the United States would establish a treaty with another major power. Shortly thereafter he authorized Knox to negotiate arbitration treaties on broader terms than ever before, with Britain and France the first targets. Carnegie offered hearty congratulations and some advice, of course: the key to success was for Knox “to prepare the ground” by consulting with the Foreign Relations Committee in the Senate, rather than making unilateral decisions.43 But would Knox heed what was sound advice from a man he had come to detest?