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Second call for the peace congress

Second call for the peace congress

A large group of representatives from several nations, many carrying weapons and making threatening gestures to others, arrive outside the “Palace of Peace” for the peace conference to end the Russo-Japanese War. Andrew Carnegie is posting a notice on the side of the building offering “Best Armor Plate for sale by Andy U.S.A.”

Comments and Context

Carl Hassmann’s cartoon cleverly depicts the actual situation behind the surface rhetoric and posturing between world powers. A second World Peace Congress was organized and funded by industrialist Andrew Carnegie in 1905, and held in 1907; and the nations of the world flocked to attend at the Hague. But few of them were committed to disarmament or peace, and the Great War (to commence in 1914) was a universal assumption.

The Second Conference was actually called for by United States Secretary of State John Hay, and President Roosevelt believed that a conference could ameliorate international tensions. He had just negotiated an end to the Russo-Japanese War and would be awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1906; he had even floated the idea of a League to Enforce Peace.

“Sacre bleu!”

“Sacre bleu!”

A Frenchman stands outside the U.S. Treasury building, holding in one hand a newspaper that states “Colombia Rejects Canal Treaty” and in the other hand a paper labeled “40,000,000 for France if Treaty is Ratified.” It appears that he was about to cash in a promissory note for $40 million, only to discover at the last moment that it is worthless.

Comments and Context

The disappointed Frenchman in Pughe’s cartoon reflected the angrier (if possible) reaction of President Roosevelt, Secretary of State John Hay, Senator John Spooner (R-WI), and other American proponents of a canal through the Panamanian region of Colombia. A treaty, with all business and financial arrangements, had been negotiated, only to be rejected by the Colombian senate.

Roosevelt regarded the rejection as a sort of blackmail attempt; and French interests who anticipated a $40-million buyout of old concessions feared a permanent default of their claims. When Panama seceded and declared independence, America got its canal agreement; and French claimants were satisfied in the new treaty.

Too late

Too late

On a desolate shore, a woman labeled “France” is playing the role of Elsa in Richard Wagner’s opera Lohengrin. She is embraced by Edward VII, King of Great Britain, who is playing the role of Lohengrin, and they are looking at a nasty knight labeled Russia playing the role of Telramund. The swan is in the background, chained to a stake on the shoreline. Caption: Elsa-France (to Lohengrin-England) — O, why did you not come sooner – before I was pledged to Telramund?

Comments and Context

France and Russia had engaged in secret talks in 1891 that led to the Dual Alliance, the Franco-Russian treaty of 1894, also secret. Its aim was to squeeze Germany in case of a continental land war — France was still smarting from its defeat by Prussia in 1871 — but it soon grew restive about the nature and reliability of the Czar. Meanwhile, Germany, which knew that secrets were never really “secret,” countered France and Russia with its own Dreibund (Triple Alliance) with Austria-Hungary and Italy.

In Keppler’s cartoon, England — growing jealous and feeling threatened by the rise of Germany on land and sea — was happy to befriend France, diplomatically and by other agreements.

The alllies

The alllies

A large bear wearing a crown labeled “Russia” clutches a diminutive Emile Loubet labeled “France” as an explosion sends clouds of smoke labeled “Balkan Trouble” billowing skyward. Loubet is afraid that once the Russian Bear has him in its grasp, it won’t let go. Caption: Russian Bear — Don’t be afraid! I won’t drop you! / France — That’s what scares me!

Comments and Context

When France formed an alliance with Russia, its major aims were to envelop an emergent Germany on the continent, and to “fish in the troubled waters” of the Pacific through Russian proxies. France did not foresee getting embroiled in ancient, internecine, and intractable squabbles of tribes, religions, languages, and hatreds of the Balkan states. But, as Russia chose to fish in those neighboring waters, France feared being drawn in to conflicts of no interest to itself.

In 1903 the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization, bolstered by support of its Christian Slavic population, initiated the Ilinden Uprising, a bloodletting that was suppressed by the last remnants of the Ottoman Empire. Russia kept a hungry eye on events; France disdained any role, as Keppler’s cartoon — and its sarcastic caption — indicate.

Kipling’s terrible nightmare

Kipling’s terrible nightmare

Rudyard Kipling sits up in his bed, pulling the covers up for protection. On the nightstand is an ink pot labeled “Hatred.” He is having a nightmare of the “Anglo-German Alliance” which shows Edward VII, King of Great Britain, and William II, Emperor of Germany, embracing.

Comments and Context

The nightmare of Rudyard Kipling, the prototypical proponent and poet of British colonialism, was his perennial fear of an alliance between England and Germany. In era of alliances and treaties around the world — often shifting, often broken — and despite the fact that Edward VII and Wilhelm II were first cousins, no such friendly alliance was effected.

Collection

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs

The fettered war god

The fettered war god

The god of war is bound by garlands labeled “Dreibund” Alliance” and “Alliance’ [a reference to the Triple Entente]. The ends of the garlands are pulled by Germany, Austria, and Italy on one side, with Russia and the Ottoman Empire tugging at another end, and John Bull, representing Great Britain, and Japan tugging at yet another end. The figure of “Peace” enters on the left carrying more garlands. Caption: National alliances as promoters of universal peace.

Comments and Context

In 1902 the world looked with plausible optimism on the international “harmony” represented by the Triple Alliance and the Triple Entente. Under different names, and inevitably shifting signatories, as well as secret treaties and diplomatic understandings, these international arrangements were viewed as guarantors of world peace. As the world discovered a dozen years later, these alliances only postponed and arguably facilitated a world war. Nations, in the end, were positioning and re-positioning themselves for the devastating Great War. Puck, often a prescient seer, was seldom more of a Pollyanna than in this cartoon.

Collection

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs

“Sour grapes!”

“Sour grapes!”

A fox labeled “France” and the Russian Bear walk away from a grape arbor labeled “Anglo-Japanese Alliance.” They have tried the grapes and found them not palatable.

Comments and Context

This seemingly innocent anthropomorphic cartoon ably suggests the troubling and complicated situation of international politics leading to the Great War a dozen years in its future. Treaties, “understandings,” secret alliances — some of them broken, and shifting — starting about the time of this cartoon are major factors in the cauldron that armed the Guns of August (1914, the commencement of continental hostilities). Great Britain ended a generation of “splendid isolation” — avoiding entangling alliances — with the Anglo-Japanese Treaty of 1902, the grape arbor of this cartoon. England’s concern partly was animated by a desire to counter Russia’s stated expansionist goals. France, which had treaty “obligations” with Russia, suddenly realized the possibility of being squeezed by powers from the east and west in the event of conflict. So Russia and Japan had reasons not to savor the grapes in the cartoon. A significant aspect of the Anglo-Japanese Treaty inured to the benefit of the United States and Theodore Roosevelt. During the negotiations he hosted to end the Russo-Japanese War two years subsequent, he was able to call upon Great Britain and its special relationship with Tokyo for assistance and back-channel communications. In the same manner also, Germany, tellingly absent from the 1902 round of alliances, was useful when Roosevelt recruited Kaiser Wilhelm to play a role with his cousin Czar Nicholas.

Collection

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs

The old enemy of the canal at his old tricks

The old enemy of the canal at his old tricks

A huge man, representing “Transcontinental R.R. Interests,” holds many strings linked to members of the U.S. Senate to stall legislation on a “Nicaragua Canal Treaty.”

Comments and Context

This cartoon is reminiscent of Puck‘s famous “Bosses Of the Senate” (1889) by Joseph Keppler Sr., showing many large figures representing the Trusts in the Senate galleries. Here, the Railroad Trust is depicted as manipulating the members on the floor in opposition to the proposed Isthmian canal (Nicaragua the likely route, in most speculation). Largely neglected by history is the opposition to the building of a canal by railroad monopolies that profited from coastal trade in the United States.

Collection

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs

Letter from Theodore Roosevelt to John Hay

Letter from Theodore Roosevelt to John Hay

President Roosevelt asks Secretary of State Hay not to speak with Illinois Senator Shelby M. Cullom until Roosevelt has had a chance to discuss the proposed amendments to the Newfoundland Treaty with some senators. The president also encloses a copy of his letter to Andrew Dickson White, “which explains itself.”

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1904-12-13

Letter from Theodore Roosevelt to John Hay

Letter from Theodore Roosevelt to John Hay

President Roosevelt tells Secretary of State Hay it might be worthwhile to bring up the treaty again and suggests he speak with Senators Henry Cabot Lodge, Eugene Hale, and William P. Frye. Roosevelt is displeased by Sir Edward Clarke’s remarks at a dinner honoring American diplomat Joseph Hodges Choate.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1904-11-29