I

‘Internationalism’ was flourishing prior to 1914 although the term itself was, as Madeleine Herren notes, only ‘coined in the middle of the nineteenth century’. The Swiss philosopher Ludwig Stein fashioned a definition in 1911 whereby, as Herren summarizes, contemporary internationalist ideas were ‘a dialectical development with cosmopolitanism as thesis, nationalism as antithesis, and internationalism as synthesis’.Footnote ⁸ More recently, internationalism has been seen as an ‘attempt to foster links across nations through congresses, conferences and organisations’.Footnote ⁹ The internationalism of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was made possible by interrelated processes of globalization (industrialization, imperialism) and technological change (the telegraph, railways, steamships), shrinking the world, prompting efforts at standardization, and showcasing the possibilities of transnational cooperation (e.g. the International Telegraph Union).Footnote ¹⁰ An optimism took hold that ordinary people could cultivate a ‘cultural internationalism’ that might reduce, if not eliminate, conflict.Footnote ¹¹ Certain ‘myths’ and ‘misconceptions’ have arisen from this heady optimism; as Glenda Sluga and Patricia Clavin remark, internationalism is often derided as a ‘utopian illusion’.Footnote ¹²

Such derision, however, conceals the significance of efforts to create a global civil society where the nation state would be transcended by new structures of power residing in ‘the realm of culture, ideology, and political debate’.Footnote ¹³ Whether this nascent civil society was truly ‘global’ is questionable (its origins being irrefutably Western), prompting a rebuke from global historians who juxtapose this purportedly ‘benign’ society against the brutal realities of colonialism.Footnote ¹⁴ But this contradiction was rarely acknowledged at the time, social activists instead sensing an unprecedented opportunity to reshape international relations.Footnote ¹⁵ This chimed with the reformist agenda of Progressive-era America, hence many scholars have, as Katharina Rietzler remarks, focused on the links between an emergent global civil society and the parallel emergence of American philanthropic foundations.Footnote ¹⁶ Indeed, Rietzler and Inderjeet Parmar note how this combination was ‘central to constructing the “American century”, [and] the rise and consolidation of American power in international politics’.Footnote ¹⁷

Although most studies of American philanthropy focus on the interwar and Cold War periods, some discussions of pre-1914 examples exist. Peter Weber contends that the philanthropy of Carnegie and Edwin Ginn (the Boston-based publisher who launched the World Peace Foundation in 1910) heralded ‘the converging of a new internationalism and scientific approaches [that] predated the First World War’. This, continues Weber, ‘combined with a sense of American superiority’, anticipated the more interventionist tendencies of later American philanthropy.Footnote ¹⁸ Elsewhere, Rietzler suggests that the Endowment tapped into existing networks of peace activists, a strategy that paid off in the short-term but necessitated a rupture after 1918 as the CEIP prioritized more legalistic solutions. In advancing this thesis, Rietzler contends that the CEIP was initially wary of meddling in the affairs of existing groups.Footnote ¹⁹ For Michael A. Lutzker, this wariness was one of two defining characteristics of the fledgling Endowment, the other being a determination to project themselves as an institution of scientific research rather than a peace group.Footnote ²⁰ Krige and Rausch neatly encapsulate this orthodoxy, describing the pre-war activities of the CEIP as ‘cautiously non-offensive’ compared to the ‘more intrusive’ nature of its interwar interventions.Footnote ²¹

This article, however, contends that the CEIP was more intrusive from the start, their early engagement with European organizations amounting to co-option rather than co-operation. It thus leans towards Weber’s thesis, whilst also aligning with Ludovic Tournès’s contention that the CEIP used its new European base in Paris – the Centre Européen de la Dotation Carnegie pour le Paix Internationale, inaugurated in March 1912 – to bring the main European institutions ‘under the aegis of the Dotation’.Footnote ²² Gabre, Guieu, and Marcobelli similarly note that the Dotation demonstrated the CEIP’s intention to ‘play a central role in the European peace movement’, inciting friction between New York and Berne.Footnote ²³ The Dotation amounted to a distinctly American beachhead in Europe, staffed by amenable Europeans and possessing little meaningful autonomy. Even before the Dotation’s creation, the fixation on ‘scientific’ rather than ‘sentimental’ pacifism established faultlines between Europe and America. The corrosive preconception that an outdated pacifism lingered in Europe permeated the CEIP from its inception, affecting how Carnegie’s money would be distributed. Nicholas Murray Butler (president of Columbia University and prominent CEIP figure) warned European organizations in June 1911 that the mission was more far-reaching than simply subsidizing existing groups, whilst Carnegie himself evoked explicitly interventionist goals when describing the Endowment as an American-based central authority.Footnote ²⁴

But the story is not simply one of transatlantic tensions, or even two incompatible conceptions of peace work. Animosities arising from the CEIP’s interventions mirrored and amplified existing strains within the European movement. Furthermore, the CEIP’s ‘scientific’ approach to peace was not entirely new, having already found considerable expression in European pacifist circles. Both the Interparliamentary Union (IPU) and the International Peace Bureau (IPB) embedded support for arbitration into their platforms, whilst the Institut de droit international first met in Ghent in 1873, convinced that legalists could represent the ‘conscience juridique du monde civilisé’. The Institute’s ‘close connections to international politics and diplomacy’, notes Gabriela Frei, ensured that their advocacy of arbitration informed The Hague Conferences of 1899 and 1907, and the 1909 London Naval Conference.Footnote ²⁵ Many Europeans, including Alfred Fried, considered international law a corollary to economic interdependence and cultural homogeneity. Fried’s understanding of a ‘smaller and interdependent’ world, notes Peter van den Dungen, constituted the bedrock of a ‘scientific’ pacifism that ‘contrasted with traditional, “sentimental” and “ethical” pacifism’.Footnote ²⁶ Moreover, this was an interconnected world that could be documented, adding impetus to internationalist endeavours like the Union of International Associations (UIA), that were alive to the possibilities of transnational cooperation and standardization.

The CEIP’s privileging of legalistic and scientific approaches to peace was not uniquely American; it existed coterminously with similar trajectories of activism in Europe. Nonetheless, advocacy of arbitration and international law was particularly strong in the United States, reflecting a Progressive-era spirit of reformism and encouraging American activists to impose a legalist approach on a more global scale. The Lake Mohonk Conferences on International Arbitration had championed the cause since 1895, whilst American delegates helped establish pioneering arbitration mechanisms at the 1899 Hague Conference.Footnote ²⁷ Even after the 1907 Hague meeting struggled to build upon these foundations, American jurists promoted international law indefatigably, via the American Society of International Law (ASIL), and its journal, The American Journal of International Law (both established in 1907). For Elihu Root, the ASIL would enhance popular understanding of international law, forging a corrective to the ‘extreme and extravagant views’ that drive governments to war.Footnote ²⁸ Such initiatives, contends Benjamin Allen Coates, encouraged men like Root and James Brown Scott to imagine ‘their nation in the vanguard’ of a civilizing project underpinned by law.Footnote ²⁹ International law was a cornerstone not only of American peace work but also, as Paolo Amorosa remarks, America’s ‘destiny … as the standard bearer of a new diplomacy, more advanced than the traditional European one and based on the sharp division of law and politics’.Footnote ³⁰

II

The transnational peace movement before 1910 was undeniably shaped by European-rooted organizations, albeit of a relatively recent vintage.Footnote ³¹ After the emergence of national peace societies in the aftermath of the Napoleonic Wars, a brief flurry of cross-border activism saw seven ‘international’ peace congresses take place in Europe between 1843 and 1853.Footnote ³² Momentum then stalled as Europe experienced an upsurge of nationalism and war.Footnote ³³ The congresses were revived towards the century’s end, a ‘Universal Peace Congress’ meeting in Paris in 1889 with subsequent meetings held annually until the outbreak of the First World War. This ‘global’ movement was overwhelmingly European in location and complexion, dominated, as Verdiana Grossi reminds us, by ‘an intellectual elite belonging to the liberal bourgeoisie and aristocracy’. It was part of a contemporary normative project that held that Enlightenment positivism would allow pacifists to harness a popular aversion to war. Although a parallel seam of peace activism existed (less elitist and of a more distinctly socialist hue), the movement’s leadership comprised, as Grossi reminds us, a European elite tapping into a ‘reservoir of dreams, utopias, projects and reforms’.Footnote ³⁴ The two approaches could align – Frédéric Passy, chairing the 1889 Paris gathering, was convinced that the ‘fraternity’ of labour alongside international arbitration would become ‘the rule of the world’ – but there was a persistent tension between bourgeois pacifism and the more militant tendencies of socialist antimilitarism.Footnote ³⁵

Nonetheless, the allure of peace activism across wider constituencies of global civil society contributed to the establishment of the IPU in 1889, an organization, headquartered in Berne, that fused advocacy of arbitration with a more generalist approach to peace activism.Footnote ³⁶ The IPU held eighteen conferences before the Great War, all in Europe bar the 1904 meeting in St. Louis. By their own reckoning, early gatherings were received with ‘contemptuous smiles’, but later ones constituted ‘important international events’ that captured public and press attention.Footnote ³⁷ As the IPU’s organizational structures took shape, its Council was ‘entrusted to the secretaryship of one of the Swiss members’, Albert Gobat,Footnote ³⁸ but his position came under increased scrutiny by 1906. The British, notes Grossi, used the IPU’s 1906 London Conference to ‘dethrone’ Gobat and urge that the IPU’s headquarters move ‘to a location closer to London’. Much of the planning was carried out in collaboration with Carnegie at the industrialist’s Scottish bolthole at Skibo Castle.Footnote ³⁹ The machinations were partly successful; Gobat was replaced by the Norwegian Christian Lange, but the relocation of the Union’s headquarters took longer, moving to Brussels in 1911, then to Oslo during the war, and finally to Geneva in 1921, where it remains today. This episode presaged the critiques of Gobat that were articulated more stridently, especially in American circles, after 1910.

Gobat’s appraisal of the 1906 intrigues – ‘an affront to Switzerland’ – similarly anticipated his reactions to criticism thereafter.Footnote ⁴⁰ This is important because of Gobat’s prominence within another organization emanating from the revived Peace Congresses, namely the IPB, launched in 1891 under the presidency of Danish politician Frederik Bajer. The IPB’s mission was to coordinate national peace societies, organize the Universal Peace Congresses, and produce peace propaganda for schools, universities, workers’ societies, and the press.Footnote ⁴¹ It played a significant role in the lead-up to the 1899 Hague Conference, distributing materials that connected pacifists with the broader public.Footnote ⁴² Given the Bureau’s financial limitations, these efforts were no mean feat and were recognized with the 1910 Nobel Peace Prize, awarded to the bureau and its first secretary, Élie Ducommun.Footnote ⁴³ Nonetheless, Berne’s primacy as a hub of internationalism was challenged by the parallel emergence of Brussels, notably the founding there of the International Institute of Bibliography (IIB) in the 1890s, the brainchild of Henri La Fontaine and Paul Otlet.Footnote ⁴⁴ By 1907, twenty Belgium-based international organizations, including the IIB, formed the Central Office of International Institutions, which morphed into the UIA in 1910.Footnote ⁴⁵ Whilst Brussels hosted the UIA, Berne boasted the Universal Postal Union, the International Telegraph Union, the Central Office for International Carriage by Rail, and the United International Bureaux for the Protection of Intellectual Property. As Herren reminds us, Switzerland hosted ‘the most intergovernmental offices’ in the world by 1914, including those ‘with the most comprehensive remit’.Footnote ⁴⁶ Other European cities could stake a claim too, notably The Hague (having hosted the peace conferences and being the site of the Carnegie-funded ‘Peace Palace’), Monaco (Prince Albert I establishing the International Institute for Peace (IIP) in 1903), and Paris, whose hosting of the Exposition Universelle in both 1889 and 1900 maintained its status as a truly global city.

Although France’s great power status rendered Paris a less suitable hub for internationalism than neutral countries, French support for internationalist projects was invaluable. To encourage this, Conciliation Internationale was founded in Paris in 1905 by Paul-Henri Balluet d’Estournelles de Constant, a French deputy from 1895 to 1904, then a Senator until his death in 1924. D’Estournelles had already established the Groupe parlementaire français de l’arbitrage international in 1903, a remarkably successful initiative, securing the support of more than half of French deputies and senators before the war.Footnote ⁴⁷ Combined with tangible advances in arbitration at The Hague and promotion of arbitration elsewhere (not least in Britain via groups like the International Arbitration and Peace Association (IAPA) and the International Arbitration League (IAL)), it was clear that European peace work had assumed a legalistic hue long before the CEIP’s intervention. A shared advocacy of ‘scientific’ peace activism helped forge transatlantic links, and d’Estournelles’ role was particularly consequential. An obvious connection was his American wife, yet d’Estournelles himself only visited the United States for the first time in 1902. According to his biographer, this visit had a ‘profound effect’, disabusing him of pejorative preconceptions and encouraging him to act as a bridge between the two continents. His promotion of arbitration had twin motivations: first, it was considered more likely than sentimental pacifism to gain traction with both the public and policymaking elites; second, it allowed France to sit alongside the Anglo-Saxon powers, and not in their slipstream, by championing arbitration’s possibilities.Footnote ⁴⁸

Although few contemporary peace activists were dogmatically ‘peace at any price’, d’Estournelles purposely distanced himself from ‘utopian’ projects. He assured his parliamentary colleagues in May 1906 that he sought not to abolish all wars but ‘to make them rarer, more difficult’.Footnote ⁴⁹ He largely eschewed public association with those ‘whose actions are more sentimental and unproven than reasoned’, declining an invitation to the 1907 Peace Congress in Munich on these grounds.Footnote ⁵⁰ Instead, he cultivated influential transatlantic friendships, notably with those like Carnegie and Nicholas Murray Butler (president of Columbia University and prominent CEIP figure), who shared his unsentimental pacifism.Footnote ⁵¹ For Michael Clinton, d’Estournelles’ American connections exemplified a ‘complex and dynamic’ relationship between the two continents based on ‘reciprocity’, the United States ‘supporting and complementing European society’ rather than seeking to rival it (this latter dynamic emerging only after the Great War).Footnote ⁵² As d’Estournelles’ biographer notes, collaboration with prominent and wealthy Americans offered greater value than relying on the ‘quantitatively large but fragile movement’ in Europe.Footnote ⁵³ There was a financial imperative too. In late 1906, Carnegie pledged $15,000 per year for five years to fund an American branch of Conciliation Internationale, which would stay faithful to d’Estournelles’ original organization. ‘It is our purpose’, Butler assured the Frenchman, ‘to keep the name which you have chosen and to make this merely an American branch of your great International Society’.Footnote ⁵⁴ Such deference would not be sustained once the new Endowment asserted itself after 1910.

III

The network of European peace activists that the nascent CEIP engaged with was broad and interconnected. Prominent personalities like Ducommun, Lange, Bajer, d’Estournelles, and La Fontaine, alongside those more associated with national rather than international movements (Gaston Moch in France, Bertha von Suttner in Austria, Alfred Fried in Germany and Austria, Hodgson Pratt in Britain, to name but four), corresponded regularly and attended the same events, constituting a tight-knit ‘elite’ that lent the movement coherence whilst obfuscating points of divergence. Many traversed more than one organization, notably the UIA’s La Fontaine, who also served as IPB president. Their efforts were helped by influential books like Ivan Bloch’s Is War Now Impossible? (1898) and Norman Angell’s The Great Illusion (1910), drawing wider attention to the devastating social, political, and economic consequences of war.Footnote ⁵⁵ Their ideas also gained traction at the highest levels of diplomacy, The Hague Conferences taking seriously issues like disarmament and international arbitration.Footnote ⁵⁶ Moreover, American delegations were prominent participants at The Hague, something which, alongside the 1904 IPU conference in St Louis, the Universal Peace Congresses of 1893 (Chicago) and 1904 (Boston), as well as the prominence of American jurists in the field of international law, meant that peace activism underwent a transatlantic turn long before the CEIP’s inception.

The increased visibility and global reach of the movement captured the attention of both the public and policymakers.Footnote ⁵⁷ As Ian Clark notes, this helped infuse ‘into international society … a normative bent in favour of prioritizing the interests of humanity’.Footnote ⁵⁸ However, no amount of positive spin could mask The Hague system’s failure to curb the arms race, particularly the Anglo-German naval rivalry. It was in this context that Angell, on the back of The Great Illusion’s success, urged Carnegie to adopt bold, ‘even revolutionary’ approaches to peace, especially targeting the young via education.Footnote ⁵⁹ This was a key objective not only of Carnegie’s ‘Peace Fund’ but also Edwin Ginn’s World Peace Foundation. Despite fleeting hopes that the two Americans might collaborate, Carnegie’s deeper pockets quickly eclipsed Ginn’s efforts.Footnote ⁶⁰ From the start, the CEIP’s approach to peace work sat comfortably with Europeans like d’Estournelles and Angell, avoiding overt links to pacifism and focusing instead on influencing political and financial elites.Footnote ⁶¹ The CEIP had three divisions: Economics and History, International Law, and Intercourse and Education.Footnote ⁶² The latter, led by Butler, focused on cultural internationalism and promoting international dialogue. Butler, who emphasized education’s importance in cultivating an ‘international mind’, significantly shaped the CEIP’s vision both domestically and abroad.Footnote ⁶³ The establishment of the CEIP, alongside the WPF and the American Society for the Judicial Settlement of International Disputes (also formed in 1910), reflected the determination of American progressives to prioritize targeted outreach rather than relying on idealistic appeals.Footnote ⁶⁴

In summer 1911, before tensions escalated, La Fontaine travelled to the United States, seeking a substantial share of the ‘Peace Fund’. He spoke to James Brown Scott, head of the Division of International Law, accentuating the IPB’s role as the ‘only international organization federating all peace societies’, but acknowledging financial adversity when requesting ‘generous aid’.Footnote ⁶⁵ La Fontaine submitted a memorandum outlining the IPB’s past achievements and future plans, including the need to improve its publications and hire permanent staff to expand its global propaganda efforts. In doing so, he emphasized how the IPB shared the strategic priorities of American activists, telling Scott that increased funding was needed to target ‘lawyers, professors, businessmen, etc.’, and to exercise a ‘more systemic action’ on public opinion.Footnote ⁶⁶ Scott responded cautiously, acknowledging the IPB’s importance but stressing that all proposals would be scrutinized carefully before funds were allocated. Frustrated by an apparent European assumption that subsidies would flow automatically, Scott insisted that Carnegie’s wealth was not a guaranteed resource. He even hinted that the CEIP might establish its own European agencies if existing organizations ‘are not doing the work as we believe they should do it’. The implication was clear: a research-led approach to peace work must prevail. Whilst maintaining that the CEIP was reluctant to meddle, Scott advised that they would not ‘be hurried’ into providing subventions ‘simply because some peace workers feel that they are not taken at their own estimate of their importance’.Footnote ⁶⁷

Scott’s hesitancy reflected an American perception that European organizations had failed to exploit fully the progress made hitherto. Some Europeans shared this frustration. Lange considered coordination between existing groups ‘imperfect’, a deficiency that must be rectified by the IPU and IPB.Footnote ⁶⁸ The opportunity was certainly there, the IPU enjoying privileged access to governments whilst the IPB could focus on converting ‘public opinion to ideas of concord and conciliation’.Footnote ⁶⁹ But, for most European activists, the problem was not their approach to peace work but the lack of sufficient funds to do the work properly, a problem that Carnegie’s cash would solve. For example, the IPB’s publication, Correspondence bi-mensuelle, was recognized as inadequate, offering only summaries of peace activities and pacifist writings. Plans were thus devised for an augmented journal, Le Mouvement pacifiste, to be published tri-lingually (French, German, and English).Footnote ⁷⁰ This was an expensive and ambitious project, undoubtedly encouraged by news of Carnegie’s initiative. Indeed, seemingly oblivious to Scott’s warnings, La Fontaine assured the IPB committee that substantial CEIP support was forthcoming.Footnote ⁷¹ The reality, however, was that the fledgling Endowment sought to appraise existing peace organizations and provide support judiciously. An initial scoping of the Endowment’s ambitions warned that the ‘greatest care’ was needed to avoid making ‘hasty and ill-considered’ assurances, retaining the right to circumvent existing groups and ‘carry on its work itself by means of properly constituted agencies’. The ambition was always that the Endowment should ‘assume an imposing, if not a controlling, place in the development of the movement toward international peace’.Footnote ⁷²

Publicly, however, the CEIP offered repeated assurances of non-intervention, to the relief of many in Europe. Von Suttner considered transatlantic collaboration ‘very encouraging’, convinced that European societies remained essential for carrying out peace work in those parts of Europe where it was most challenging and essential.Footnote ⁷³ But the sincerity of the CEIP’s assurances are questionable. In private correspondence, Butler dismissed the Bureau’s plans for Le Mouvement Pacifiste as ‘a waste of money’, complaining that Gobat’s initiative had only irritated CEIP trustees.Footnote ⁷⁴ From Paris, Conciliation Internationale’s Jules Prudhommeaux was similarly critical, agreeing with Fried that existing publications in France (La Paix par Le Droit), Germany (Die Friedens-Warte), and Great Britain (The Arbitrator) ‘provide more service than the journal created by Berne ever will’. A tri-lingual Le Mouvement pacifiste was simply ‘a waste and a mistake’. By March 1912, Prudhommeaux noted that Gobat’s plan had been poorly received across Europe, predicting that ‘M. Gobat and his advisors [will] hear the necessary truths’ at an IPB Committee meeting in May.Footnote ⁷⁵ D’Estournelles agreed, describing the plans as ‘childish and injurious’, an ‘unfortunate move’ undertaken by ‘excellent men but of second order’ who have ‘nothing to lose, but the authority of the Endowment’.Footnote ⁷⁶ Gobat, however, was undeterred, insisting that Le Mouvement pacifiste was the only truly ‘international’ peace journal, representing a purer form of internationalism than publications emanating from individual countries. He even vented incredulity that the ‘high American spirit’ which had so recently boosted the peace movement was now seeking to rein it in.Footnote ⁷⁷

IV

Berne’s publication strategies were not the only cause of transatlantic tensions; significant divergences also arose concerning the location of the Bureau’s headquarters. Many CEIP figures, notably Butler, considered Brussels ‘a more favourable centre’ given the myriad other international organizations based there and its greater accessibility for overseas travellers (especially those coming from the new world). Though framed as a friendly suggestion, Butler implied that future funding depended on the IPB’s effectiveness, which he believed would improve in Brussels.Footnote ⁷⁸ The IPB rejected the proposal, citing Berne’s neutrality, financial support from the Swiss government, and the need for autonomy.Footnote ⁷⁹ La Fontaine argued that the ureau must ‘not appear to be a wheel in a large organisation’, its single-minded focus on peace distinguishing it from other organizations, amounting to ‘something special which justifies its isolation’ in the Swiss capital.Footnote ⁸⁰ Moreover, Gobat’s parallel role as a Swiss parliamentarian precluded him from relocating. Lange supported the IPB’s stance, noting that forcing Gobat (‘an excellent worker, methodical and efficient as few, if any, in the peace movement’) to move would be unmerited and counterproductive.Footnote ⁸¹

For the CEIP, Berne’s resistance to relocation was further evidence of its inflexibility and dogmatic pacifism. Adamant that the IPB ‘can do more effective work in Brussels than in Berne’, Butler lamented how the ‘personality of M. Gobat is the stumbling block’, perplexed that ‘a great world movement should be dependent upon purely personal considerations’.Footnote ⁸² He was already wary of association with the ‘extreme type of peace propaganda’ that the IPB represented, preferring instead a more pragmatic approach to international relations.Footnote ⁸³ An American conviction that the European peace scene was dominated by idealists was evidenced in Butler’s comment, prior to a visit to Europe in summer 1911, that he was off to see ‘all the cranks and half the wise men of Europe’.Footnote ⁸⁴ Still, perhaps to appease the IPB, or more likely as a short-term expediency, a single subvention was made to the IPB that year, Berne retaining responsibility for distributing funds to peace societies beyond the Western hemisphere. It was clear, nonetheless, that this was an interim arrangement and that the IPB would be increasingly sidelined in the future.

This marginalization took tangible form in March 1912 with the establishment of the Centre Européen, which promptly assumed responsibility for distributing CEIP subventions. An angry IPB protested the move, Gobat and Georges Bovet (chair of the IPB’s permanent committee) arguing that distributing subsidies from Paris risked alienating German peace societies and undermining the ureau’s prestige. They urged the CEIP to reconsider, but Butler insisted that this was the ‘most effective and satisfactory’ approach.Footnote ⁸⁵ The establishment of the Dotation was significant, allowing the CEIP to assert greater influence over the European peace movement while maintaining a façade of local autonomy. It reflected clearly the influence of d’Estournelles, who became the first president of the Centre’s Advisory Council, whilst the Paris office itself was headed by Prudhommeaux.Footnote ⁸⁶ Where the CEIP insisted that the endeavour was designed to avoid duplication and waste, the IPB (not unreasonably) saw an attempt to ‘supplant Berne with American money’.Footnote ⁸⁷ The Endowment’s low opinion of the IPB resurfaced during an August 1911 meeting, Butler slating the Bureau for being too detached from ‘the great lines of the modern movement’, hence the need to establish a CEIP presence in Paris.Footnote ⁸⁸ Tensions escalated through 1912, the IPB increasingly bitter about the ‘loss of prestige’ and influence. Bovet warned of the irreparable damage to the IPB’s standing should the Dotation’s role extend beyond mere mediation to include criticism and oversight of the Bureau’s activities.Footnote ⁸⁹ The French pacifist Gaston Moch even considered it ‘impossible’ to work with Dotation staff who looked upon their former colleagues with a pronounced disdain.Footnote ⁹⁰

According to Jens Wegener, the Dotation was an ‘interactive model’ of transatlantic cooperation that prevented the Endowment from dictating from afar; it was, after all, located in Paris and staffed by Europeans.Footnote ⁹¹ But it was also intended to be a mouthpiece for the Endowment’s American Trustees, its European Advisory Council being exactly that – advisory. The Dotation was clearly established to challenge, if not usurp, existing institutions. Empowered by American money, the Dotation’s contempt for the IPB amplified longstanding tensions between the Berne Bureau and Conciliation Internationale. Fractious relations between Gobat and d’Estournelles were noted by the CEIP trustee, Robert S. Brookings, when accompanying Carnegie on a visit to Europe in summer 1913. Gobat was worried that his organization would ‘never receive fair treatment’ from the Frenchman, whilst d’Estournelles dismissed the Bureau as ‘a back number’ and questioned the value of its work. D’Estournelles did, however, acknowledge the IPB’s past contributions, praised Henri Golay (Gobat’s deputy) as highly capable, and advised the CEIP to liaise directly with Berne to avoid conflict. He also cautioned against drastic funding cuts lest they cripple the IPB’s operations.Footnote ⁹² In so doing, d’Estournelles reflected a widespread European assumption that local-level knowledge was needed to navigate the political complexities of the old continent. For his part, La Fontaine cautioned that national peace societies were protective of their autonomy and wary of external interference, hence only the IPB, by virtue of its experience and independence, could ‘act in European circles where prejudices and misunderstandings are still so prevalent’.Footnote ⁹³

A similar argument was made by Gobat in September 1912, within a lengthy despatch that acknowledged the movement’s current imperfections but insisted that only the IPB could correct them. Pacifism in Europe, he began, was less coordinated than in America, more modest in size, and certainly plagued by more jealousies and chauvinism. At present, he conceded, European pacifism did not constitute ‘a powerful current capable of exercising a decisive influence either on public opinion or upon political affairs’. The movement often lacked cohesion, he continued, owing chiefly to the ‘particularists and chauvinists’ who dominate national peace societies. Because of this, he speculated that the Endowment’s reservations about the IPB ‘may not be of American origin but have come from Europe’.Footnote ⁹⁴ This was a thinly disguised criticism of the ‘patriotic pacifism’ espoused by d’Estournelles. As Cooper notes, although fears of being derided as antipatriotic were eroding by 1914, few pre-war ‘pacifists’ opposed using force for purposes of self-defence or national liberation.Footnote ⁹⁵ Gobat insisted that the IPB must ‘play a decisive role’ in overcoming these difficulties, being ‘free from all national ties’ and operating ‘above national interests and sentiments’. Though anxious to emphasize the IPB’s commitment to pragmatic peace work – ‘in these days one accomplishes more by sharp words than by sweet ones’ – he maintained that ‘purely theoretical and sentimental propaganda’ remained valuable.Footnote ⁹⁶

Gobat’s intervention failed to quell Butler’s growing irritation. ‘I’m not going to pay the Berne people the same thing’, he told his assistant, Henry S. Haskell: ‘Cut it’.Footnote ⁹⁷ In early 1913 he chastised the Bureau for indulging in ‘very foolish’ initiatives that were merely ‘frittering away money’.Footnote ⁹⁸ His ire was likely augmented by a letter from Bovet asserting that the IPB, representing an ‘international and neutral ground where pacifist enterprises can best be appreciated’, was better placed than the Dotation to distribute subventions.Footnote ⁹⁹ Comparing the CEIP (‘which has only been in existence a very short time’) with the longstanding IPB, Bovet implored Butler to spare the latter the ‘humiliation’ of being subsumed. The Bureau’s leadership was convinced that the Americans, wilfully or otherwise, failed to comprehend the IPB’s importance and distinctiveness. As Gobat put it, ‘the peace movement in Europe, and the International Peace Bureau in particular, are not very well understood in America’.Footnote ¹⁰⁰ His suspicion was not misplaced. Although some prominent Americans – Scott and Root among them – looked upon the Bureau’s proposals ‘favourably’, the reality was, as Mauermann has put it, that Gobat’s agenda was dismissed ‘as a bombastic chimera’, reducing still further the Berne Bureau’s authority and solidifying the personal enmity between Gobat and d’Estournelles.Footnote ¹⁰¹

V

Such personal enmities had soured relations between Berne and New York from the start. Butler’s opinion of the European peace scene was shaped by his closeness to d’Estournelles, the American’s candour in letters to his French friend echoing, albeit more vociferously, the latter’s own opinions. In January 1913, Butler accused Gobat and La Fontaine of ‘extreme egotism and selfishness’, castigating them as men of ‘small calibre’ whose maladroit approach to peace work explains ‘why the movement has made so little progress’. He rejected European allegations of American ‘control’ as ‘absurd’: ‘They are under no compulsion to accept “American Money” … but if they do accept it they must subject themselves to such measure of supervision and oversight’. Furthermore, the CEIP was under no obligation to channel funds to the IPB, a fact that ‘might be permitted to percolate into the intelligence’ of those who were so quick to complain.Footnote ¹⁰² Clearly, even before war came in 1914, much of the optimism engendered by the ‘Peace Fund’ had dissipated. Rather than facilitating a more cohesive international peace movement, Carnegie’s cash exacerbated existing animosities and divisions.

To be sure, the CEIP did produce a well-publicized 1914 report into the causes of consequences of the 1912/13 Balkan Wars, showcasing the fledgling organization’s potential and foregrounding its focus on pragmatic, legalistic, and rational peace work.Footnote ¹⁰³ But at the same time, the IPB, which had initially accentuated its transition from ‘sentimental’ to ‘scientific’ pacifism, began to reassert the importance of the latter. La Fontaine insisted in March 1913 that marginalizing sentimental pacifism was detrimental. He warned Scott of the ‘intolerable situation’ that would arise should such positions be sidelined for ‘personal reasons’, whereby ‘some people’ criticized an institution ‘which for twenty years has directed European pacifism and has won for itself a high measure of respect’. Without naming d’Estournelles or explicitly referencing Butler’s contempt for Gobat, the insinuation was clear. He even condemned the entrustment of the cause to a cabal of men ‘who (with few exceptions) are in no way related to the peace societies’. The growing dominance of individuals like d’Estournelles, or simply the more ‘scientific’ approach favoured by CEIP trustees would, in La Fontaine’s view, ‘belittle’ the IPB and offend those who had long ‘devoted themselves’ to the pacifist cause. ‘Personally’, he concluded, ‘I would resent such action as a mark of distrust which would wound me to the quick’.Footnote ¹⁰⁴

The CEIP, for its part, wasted few opportunities to lambast Berne. In early 1914, Butler celebrated the Dotation’s recent progress, contending that the ‘primacy’ of Paris and the French language in diplomacy allows the Centre Européen ‘to carry on activities and to exercise an influence … which would not be possible were it placed elsewhere’. The IPB, meanwhile, had little to no impact on ‘the average man’, offering only ‘vague discussion’ when more vigorous ‘educational work along economic, commercial, ethical and social lines’ was needed.Footnote ¹⁰⁵ Criticism of Berne also emanated from British peace activists, especially those who shared the Endowment’s preference for legalistic approaches to peace work. The IAPA’s G.H. Perris considered it ‘fatuous’ of the ‘old gentlemen’ who dominated the Bureau to simultaneously deride the CEIP and demand their money. Still, Perris held that Gobat’s unexpected death in March 1914, coupled with the recent storm of criticism engulfing the IPB, marked a ‘decisive turning point’ after which the Berne Bureau might ‘become a much more effective organ than it has been hitherto’. For Butler, Perris’s comments echoed those ‘heard from other sources [and] only accentuates how fatuous some of the extreme pacifists are’.Footnote ¹⁰⁶

Any opportunities for greater cohesion following Gobat’s passing were dashed just weeks later, as the July Crisis spiralled into the Great War. Ironically, this war fulfilled the grim prophecies of peace activists rather than the promises of politicians: not a swift and glorious victory, but a long and destructive struggle, leaving ruin and revolution in its wake. The tragedy of the 1914–18 war, remarks Sandi Cooper, was accentuated by the fact that an ‘essentially pacific’ European public was so easily ‘roused to terror by the manipulation of a few in power’.Footnote ¹⁰⁷ Cooper’s verdict echoes d’Estournelles’ lament as the July Crisis peaked: although the people overwhelmingly wanted peace, the ‘chauvinistic’ press was pushing them to accept a war that ‘can only harm them’.Footnote ¹⁰⁸ D’Estournelles’ lament was genuine, but there is a certain irony in the fact that the ‘sentimental’ pacifism that he and the CEIP disdained provided an (arguably) more appropriate response to the realities of war. As Werner Wintersteiner puts it, the ‘despised and ridiculed’ pacifism espoused by the likes of von Suttner was uniquely capable of ‘confronting the dominant culture of violence’, much more so than the scientific approaches being adopted by others, including von Suttner’s longtime friend and collaborator Alfred Fried.Footnote ¹⁰⁹

Although some IPB adherents maintained stridently antiwar positions after hostilities broke out, the Bureau itself debated whether to call for an immediate ceasefire or condemn Germany’s invasion of Belgium and Luxembourg.Footnote ¹¹⁰ Its francophone leadership generally supported the Allied cause, inducing a tepid organizational response to the outbreak of hostilities.Footnote ¹¹¹ In October 1914, prominent IPB figures, including La Fontaine, circulated a document titled ‘What Pacifists Must Say’, which merely condemned the Central Powers and called for a durable postwar peace. La Fontaine expanded these ideas in November, outlining nine principles for international pacifism, including the need for a stronger international organization, compulsory disarmament, and open diplomacy.Footnote ¹¹² Other pacifists were influenced by Allied propaganda reports of German atrocities. Jules Puech, writing to d’Estournelles in September 1914, abhorred the demonization of Germans but condemned the ‘barbarian hordes’ responsible for the war. The Dutch pacifist, Benjamin Jong van Beek en Donk, similarly apportioned responsibility for the war to Germany and Austria and lamented the IPB’s inertia. Golay, while emphasizing the need for neutrality, maintained that the Allies stood for civilization and law, whilst some British pacifists insisted that peace could only be achieved once ‘Prussian militarism has been crushed’.Footnote ¹¹³

Affiliating pacifism with the Allied cause provided some common ground for European and American peace workers. The CEIP also supported the Allies, framing the war as a battle against Prussian militarism. ‘I feel quite sure’, Butler opined, ‘that no people will ever again permit itself to be bound in a chain of huge arguments or mis-led by the wicked and stupid argument that great armaments are necessary’.Footnote ¹¹⁴ The CEIP adopted a low profile and curtailed all funding to peace organizations. This decision, however, caused further resentment in European pacifist circles. La Fontaine opportunistically criticized the CEIP’s previous funding strategy, arguing that larger subsidies to organizations like the IPB and the UIA might have prevented the current war, whilst simultaneously urging the CEIP to provide the ‘largest sums possible’ to lay the groundwork for a postwar peace. Butler, however, maintained that pacifists must remain inactive until hostilities ceased, believing that ‘the only wise action is no action’.Footnote ¹¹⁵ Ultimately, La Fontaine’s criticism only encouraged Butler and his colleagues to distance themselves still further from European peace groups at the war’s end. Indeed, the Endowment had already, in spring 1914, ascertained a simple lesson from their outreach efforts: funding the IPB had been an error, the CEIP having gone ‘to the extreme limit of friendliness’ to assist an organization they knew to be both inefficient and ineffective.Footnote ¹¹⁶

This article contends that a damagingly poor (and at times wilfully inaccurate) opinion of European peace efforts was baked into the Endowment from its foundation. The CEIP certainly had the IPB in mind back in December 1910 when chastising those ‘professed peace societies [whose] visionary plans often retard the movement’.Footnote ¹¹⁷ Similarly, although advocacy of ‘scientific’ peace work was especially prominent in the United States, it was not unique to it. Conciliation Internationale, the IAPA, the IPU, and even the IPB, recognized the benefits of rallying political support and using positions of influence to create a favourable public sentiment. Norman Angell notably eschewed ‘sentimental’ pacifism in favour of more pragmatic arguments, even if, as Martin Ceadel notes, he sometimes struggled to reconcile the ‘pacifist and pro-defence strands in his thinking’.Footnote ¹¹⁸ The IPB was afflicted by the same tension, and it would be quite wrong to dismiss the Berne Bureau as a bastion of unreformed and outmoded pacifism. They too undertook more pragmatic work to educate political and public opinion and explored legalistic remedies for the twin problems of militarism and war. Nonetheless, the IPB positioned itself unapologetically as a broad church, reflecting multiple shades of pacifism and often speaking, in rather opaque terms, of a ‘spirit’ of pacifism.Footnote ¹¹⁹ Such exalted rhetoric did little to disabuse the CEIP of the conviction that the Berne Bureau was increasingly obsolete.

But this conviction had been present from the start, the CEIP always looking to sideline or dominate the IPB by creating a new European agency in its own image. In this sense, early American philanthropic efforts foreshadowed the more pronounced cultural diplomacy of the interwar years. For their part, the Europeans feared cultural imposition and foreign interference, exacerbating tensions and impeding cooperation.Footnote ¹²⁰ Put simply, divisions were amplified but not created by the sudden injection of Carnegie’s cash. These faultlines were aggravated further by personality clashes, the increasingly influential Butler having a higher opinion of d’Estournelles than the likes of La Fontaine and Gobat. It is, of course, highly improbable that a more harmonious peace movement could have prevented the dogs of war from being unleashed in 1914, but discord hindered the movement in its hour of need and failed to exploit the possibilities provided by Carnegie’s largesse. Like any social movement, pre-war international peace activism was only as strong as its ability to remain cohesive and avoid internecine rivalries. As the period 1910–14 shows, no amount of money can buy this cohesion; in fact, the sudden appearance of abundant financial resources only amplified suspicions. For this, all sides must bear some burden of responsibility.