CARNEGIE ENDOWMENT FOR INTERNATIONAL PEACE|, an institution
created and maintained by a fund of $10,000,000
set apart by Andrew Carnegie in 1910. The
purpose of the Endowment, as outlined by one
of its prominent active members, Dr. Nicholas
Murray Butler, president of Columbia University
is “to work for the promotion of peaceful
development of civilization by aiding and developing, supporting and directing the forces needful to bring about the prevention of war, the perfection of means for the establishment of arbitral justice between nations, and the development of a world congress or parliament, a high international court, and an international police, and to take such steps and promote such undertakings as shall bring about the substitution of law and justice for war as a means of settling international disputes and difficulties.”
The trustees selected by Mr. Carnegie to
receive the fund and administer its income met
at Washington on 14 Dec 1910. At this meeting
Mr. Carnegie read a letter informing the
trustees of his gift of $10,000,000 in 5 per cent
first mortgage bonds, the revenue of which, he
stated, “is to be administered by you to hasten
the abolition of international war, the foulest
blot upon our civilization.” The donor made no
restrictions of the gift, but left discretionary
with the trustees the expenditure of $500,000
annually accruing from the fund; he did not
attempt, moreover, to outline future action as
regards the measures, methods and policies that
were to be adopted to the end of accomplishing
the purpose specified. The only stipulation
made was that the trustees were to “keep
unceasingly in view, until it is attained, the speedy
abolition of international war between so-called
civilized nations.” The original trustees selected
by Mr. Carnegie were: United States Senator
Elihu Root, representative of the United States
at The Hague Tribunal; Nicholas Murray
Butler, president of Columbia University; Henry S. Pritchett, president of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching; Joseph H. Choate, former Ambassador to Great Britain; Albert K. Smiley, educator and humanitarian; Charles W. Eliot, president-emeritus of Harvard University; James Brown Scott, solicitor for the State Department; John W. Foster, ex-Secretary of State; Andrew J. Montague, ex-governor of Virginia; Congressman William M. Howard, Lexington, Ky.; Congressman James L. Slayden, San Antonio, Tex.; Judge Thomas Burke, Seattle, Wash.; Andrew D. White, ex-Ambassador to Germany; Robert S. Brookings, lawyer, Saint Louis, Mo.; Samuel Mather, banker, Cleveland, Ohio; J. G. Schmidlap, railroad man, Cincinnati, Ohio; Arthur W. Foster, regent of the University of California; Robert A. Franks, banker, Hoboken, N. J.; Charlemagne Tower, ex-Ambassador to Germany and Russia; Oscar S. Strauss, Ambassador to Turkey; Austen G. Fox, lawyer, New York; John Sharpe Williams, senator-elect from Mississippi; Charles L. Taylor, chairman of the Carnegie Hero Commission; John L. Cadwalader, lawyer, New York; George W. Perkins, financier, New York; Cleveland H. Dodge, philanthropist and financier; Luke E. Wright ex-Secretary of War; Robert S. Woodward, president of the Carnegie Institution.
At their first meeting these 28 trustees
accepted the fund by formal resolution, and
appointed a committee on organization which at
the next meeting, held in Washington on 9
March 1911, presented the following statement
of the aims and purposes of the Endowment: