Carnegie (31 page)

Andrew and Louise Carnegie journeyed to Kiel and were escorted to the German emperor’s imperial yacht
Hohenzollern
. Ever after Carnegie savoured the dialogue that had taken place between them. Carnegie greeted the Kaiser with this: ‘This has happened just as I could have wished, with no ceremony [they had first met on deck in an informal moment], and the Man of Destiny dropped from the clouds. Your Majesty, I have travelled two nights to accept your generous invitation, and never did so before to meet a crowned head.’

Slightly mocking, the smiling Kaiser replied: ‘I have read your book. You do not like kings.’ Carnegie voiced his agreement, but softened the opinion: ‘I do not like kings, but I do like a man behind a king when I find him.’ The conversation led on to hero kings and it turned out that Carnegie and the Kaiser shared a mutual respect for Robert, the Bruce, King of Scots, which gave Carnegie a chance to expound on Dunfermline, his birthplace, and how he now owned the actual sites of some of Scotland’s great historical events. This first encounter left Carnegie swelling with pride; as he turned away the Kaiser remarked: ‘The Scotch are much quicker and cleverer than the Germans. The Germans are too slow.’
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Later that evening the Carnegies were present at the Kaiser’s dinner for sixty guests. Carnegie’s table neighbour was Prince Bernhard Heinrich von Bülow, the German Chancellor, and consequently Carnegie’s opinions on war and the future were registered at the highest levels in Germany.

During subsequent meetings, the Kaiser expressed an interest in meeting President Roosevelt. In his autobiography Carnegie recorded his assessment of the German leader which he gave to Roosevelt:

I never met a man who enjoyed stories more keenly than [the Kaiser]. He is fine company, and I believe an earnest man, anxious for the peace and progress of the world. Suffice it to say he insists that he is, and always has been, for peace. He cherishes the fact that he has reigned for twenty-four years and has never shed human blood. He considered that the German navy is too small to affect the British and was never intended to be a rival. Nevertheless, it is my opinion very unwise, because unnecessary, to enlarge it. Prince von Bülow holds these sentiments and I believe the peace of the world has little to fear from Germany. Her interests are all favourable to peace, industrial development being her aim; and in this desirable field she is certainly making great strides.
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These words, and those he wrote to the Principal of St Andrews James Donaldson – ‘I think [the Kaiser] can be trusted and declares himself for peace’
¹⁵
– led Carnegie’s enemies to call him a dupe of Germany, but this was not entirely fair. Carnegie did see that Kaiser Wilhelm II had belligerent military intentions, and realised that disarmament was not an option in Wilhelm’s mind. For Carnegie arbitration was the key. He followed up his meetings with the Kaiser with letters to Prince von Bülow and to the German ambassador in Washington, Speck von Sternburg, promoting the cause of peace. Alas, the Hague Peace Conference was a failure as Germany resisted cooperation.

As far as America was concerned, Germany was thwarting progress in the deceleration of the arms race. Lacking Carnegie’s increasingly pacifist views, Roosevelt worked towards buttressing America’s (naval) forces against the developing militarism of both Germany and Japan. With his basic ideas on the need for international arbitration gaining prominence in his mind, Carnegie now believed that separate nations
could
formulate peace treaties one with another. He knew that Roosevelt would not cooperate on such a policy, but he persisted in trying to persuade him to slow down America’s contribution to the arms race. He was to fail.

Carnegie was also anxious about the economic downturn in America which produced the financial panic of October 1907. His pen became busy with what he thought should be done, promoting the idea of a government-sponsored central bank to guarantee deposits; out of this would evolve the US Federal Reserve System. This was a reversal, of course, of Carnegie’s old attitude to
laissez-faire
capitalism – to him America’s entire financial structure would have to change. Now that he no longer ‘grubbed for money’ himself, Carnegie believed that ‘the day of the multi-millionaire [was] over’.
¹⁶

Roosevelt’s Republican administration ended in 1909, to be replaced by another Republican government under lawyer William Howard Taft, who had served as US Solicitor General (1890–2) and Secretary of War (1904–8). Described as ‘a jovial, warm-hearted mountain of a man’, Taft was a mediocre politician despite his keen legal and administrative mind. He would fall foul of Roosevelt in a conflict that later cost the Republicans the White House, but in the interim Carnegie sought to get on with Taft and gave $20,000 to his election fund.

On leaving office Roosevelt went off to Africa on safari, a trip supported by Carnegie’s purse. Carnegie in turn toured Europe and met King Victor Emmanuel III of Italy, who did not pursue a pacifist role in the oncoming war. From Skibo and elsewhere Carnegie continued to press Roosevelt to meet with Kaiser Wilhelm II to promote peace – and he also persuaded him to push the peace agenda when he went to Sweden to receive the Nobel Prize for Peace (awarded 1906) for his efforts to end the Russo–Japanese War. With the help of Elihu Root (erstwhile US Secretary of State), Carnegie bombarded Roosevelt with advice on how he should deal with the Kaiser, suggesting that he should flatter him into believing that he alone could bring about world peace. He assured Roosevelt that he trusted the Kaiser and that peace was worthwhile at any price.

As time passed, though, Roosevelt went off the idea of meeting the volatile Kaiser and certainly was not enamoured of Carnegie’s peace-at-any-price position – although it was a line supported by others in America. Roosevelt was wary that what he was doing would not be agreed to by Taft’s government. Nevertheless, oiled by Carnegie’s election donation, Taft spoke out publicly on 22 March 1910 in support of Carnegie’s ‘Peace and Arbitration’ proposal.
¹⁷

While in Europe Roosevelt was busy making speeches, delivering one at the Sorbonne in Paris – before meeting the Kaiser – on the legitimacy of ‘righteous wars’. Carnegie was horrified, and sent him a knuckle-rapping letter. Yet Roosevelt repeated this opinion in his acceptance speech for the Nobel Prize at Christiana (modern Oslo), although he also gave credence to the creation of the League of Peace.

In the event Roosevelt did meet the Kaiser against a background of hostile German opinion against any slackening of German rearmament and interference arbitration in the nation’s foreign policy. Although the meetings were cordial enough they achieved nothing. Carnegie was disappointed; what he did not know was that Roosevelt had spoken disparagingly of Carnegie to the Kaiser. The whole field of international diplomacy was thrown into reverse gear on Friday 6 May 1910 when King Edward VII died at Buckingham Palace. What a good idea, thought Carnegie, for Roosevelt to meet up with the Kaiser at his uncle’s funeral on 20 May in London. But it was not to be. From Skibo Carnegie reassessed the situation and came to the conclusion that he had more chance now of pursuing his peace programme through Taft; he began his manipulation plans.

During 1910 the US Congress gave President Taft the authority to set up an organisation which would form an international naval fleet to police international waters; it was to be dubbed a Peace Commission. Taft received a cable from Skibo offering support for the Commission; as usual Carnegie could not resist interfering by suggesting candidates to sit on it. When Britain’s Liberal Foreign Secretary Sir Edward Grey offered public backing for the scheme Carnegie acted. At a private dinner at the White House he put forward his idea for an endowment for international peace. Taft liked the proposal and suggested that he would promote arbitration treaties between the nations if Carnegie would sponsor an infrastructure to further international peace. This resulted in the $10 million (5 per cent Federal Mortgage Bonds) Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, launched on 10 November 1910. Ever after Carnegie claimed the whole idea was his, but as historians have pointed out the originator was really
Independent
editor Hamilton Holt, with input from Elihu Root and college president Nicholas Murray Butler.
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Taft became the fund’s honorary president, with Elihu Root its president supported by twenty-eight trustees. Carnegie received more praise for his benefaction, but the public at large remained puzzled as to exactly how the fund could win peace in such unruly times. Japan had just militarily annexed Korea (27 August 1910), revolution was rife in Mexico (20 November) and Kaiser Wilhelm II was busy forming new spheres of military influence.

On the domestic front the Carnegies were following their usual programme of peregrinations, taking in the ‘cure’ at Antibes, shopping in Paris, and visiting the drawing rooms of London friends, and holding ‘open house’ at their suite at the Langholm Hotel. The year 1909 was a special one for 12-year-old Margaret Carnegie as it included her first trip abroad aboard the Red Star Line’s SS
Finland
to the Mediterranean. It was also a time for her parents to attend to her education. Carnegie had recently invested in a New York school now opened at West 55th Street and run by Clara B. Spence. To prepare her for formal education, Margaret was tutored by one of Clara B. Spence’s teachers, Anne Brinkerhoff. When the Carnegies went to visit the 100-inch telescope on Mount Wilson, above Pasadena in California, in February 1910 Miss Brinkerhoff went too as travelling tutor. In the autumn of 1910 Margaret Carnegie entered the Spence School as a ‘fourth preparatory’; she remained at the school for seven years.
¹⁹

The Carnegies were ever in the public eye; the newspapers followed Carnegie’s every project, while the more sleazy journalists were ever vigilant for anti-Carnegie gossip. To some people Carnegie was a hypocrite, an arms dealer turned pacifist, but there was never a hint of sexual scandal in his life. So those in search of titillation had to look elsewhere in Carnegie’s family tree. They found it in his niece Nancy’s marriage to a widowed family coachman, James Hever; this was a secret her mother, Carnegie’s sister-in-law Lucy Coleman, had done her best to hide from the public. Nancy had eloped with father of two James. In an attempt to head off further press speculation, Carnegie gave the couple a wedding present of $20,000 with the blessing that ‘the family would rather have such a husband for Nancy than a worthless duke’.
²⁰

While the new peace endowment handed out money to various peace societies and sponsored studies on the cause and effect of war, Carnegie was in pursuit of another goal: the US–UK arbitration treaty. Although Taft was moving towards such an agreement, Carnegie could not help interfering and plied the press with his opinions on how Taft should act. The President was both annoyed and offended; he began to realise too, that if he gave Carnegie an inch he would be encouraged to speak for America on any subject imaginable without authority, as if he were President, Congress and the Senate all rolled into one. Even so, on 29 June 1911 the US, UK and France were united in an arbitration treaty, despite opposition from such men as Theodore Roosevelt, who felt that the US was being drawn closer to a mutual defence pact. Senate wasn’t happy either, dissecting each clause in an effort to postpone ratification beyond the upcoming US election. Alas, the treaty would fail, and Carnegie’s disappointment was deepened by the fact that he had contributed $100,000 to Taft’s re-election campaign which did not bring him his usual dividend.
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In the presidential election of 1912 the White House was won by scholar, historian and reformer Democrat Woodrow Wilson, the last US President Carnegie would tackle.

In 1913 Carnegie set off for Europe to attend the dedication of the Palace of Peace at the Hague and to attend ceremonies at Berlin to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the reign of Kaiser Wilhelm II. Carnegie would present a memorial to the Kaiser signed by prominent officers of American corporations, societies and institutions to honour his long, war-free reign. The whole thing was a farce. Germany was in the throes of a huge military build-up, yet blinkered Carnegie still believed that the Kaiser was the true champion of peace in Europe. As Carnegie handed over the casket containing the memorial address, the Kaiser mendaciously commented: ‘Remember, Carnegie! Twenty-five years of peace! If I am Emperor for another twenty-five years not a shot will be fired in Europe!’
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Then it was off to the Hague to inaugurate the Peace Palace. Four hundred guests, led by Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands, viewed the exhibits of gifts given by foreign countries to furnish the palace; Carnegie did his best to merge with the crowd. The following day, when busts of King Edward VII and of peace advocate Sir William Randal Cremer were being unveiled, Carnegie delivered an address of peace between the United Kingdom, the United States and Germany, and again called for a League of Peace. An exhausted Louise recalled the occasion:

Thus the great day has passed, perhaps the greatest in Andrew’s life, when he has been permitted to see inaugurated the permanent building which he has given wherein the great ideal for peace may be wrought – until Peace and good will may be realised upon the earth.
²³

Despite Carnegie’s obsession with peace, the international world was falling apart. In Mexico on 18 February 1913 President Francisco Madero was overthrown by the ruthless General Victorio Huerta; in response, US troops massed along the US–Mexican border. In Greece King George I was assassinated (18 March) and on 29 June the Second Balkan War broke out.

The new year of 1914 promised the Carnegies the usual round of travel and Carnegie made up his diary to cover visits to London and the receipt of freedoms of the city ceremonies at Lincoln and Coventry; they would head for Skibo on 6 June and in late July and early August the family would decamp to Auchnagar. Carnegie was in a good mood, seemingly unperturbed by the war clouds that had gathered over Europe. But it wouldn’t last. On 28 June at Sarajevo the Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, and his wife were assassinated by the Bosnian revolutionary Gabriel Princip. Backed by Kaiser Wilhelm II, the Austrian Emperor Franz Joseph considered severe retaliation and his unacceptable ultimatum to Serbia led to the Austro-Hungarian government declaring war on Serbia. With Russia likely to back Serbia (Tsar Nicholas II agreed to a general mobilisation on 30 July), the balance of power in Europe was toppled. At Auchnagar Carnegie was more concerned with the possibility of there being a British civil war over the recent compromise Irish Home Rule Bill.