Implore Peace, O my reader, from whom I now part.  Implore peace not of deified thunder clouds but of every man, woman, child thou shalt meet.  Do not merely offer the prayer, “Give peace in our time,” but do thy part to answer it!  Then, at least, though the world be at strife, there shall be peace in thee.

My friend has put his finger upon our deepest disgrace.  It surely must soon be abolished between civilized nations.

The Stanton Chair of Economics at Kenyon College, Ohio, was founded in memory of Edwin M. Stanton, who kindly greeted me as a boy in Pittsburgh when I delivered telegrams to him, and was ever cordial to me in Washington, when I was an assistant to Secretary Scott.  The Hanna Chair in Western Reserve University, Cleveland; the John Hay Library at Brown University; the second Elihu Root Fund for Hamilton, the Mrs. Cleveland Library for Wellesley, gave me pleasure to christen after these friends.  I hope more are to follow, commemorating those I have known, liked, and honored.  I also wished a General Dodge Library and a Gayley Library to be erected from my gifts, but these friends had already obtained such honor from their respective Alma Maters.

My first gift to Hamilton College was to be named the Elihu Root Foundation, but that ablest of all our Secretaries of State, and in the opinion of President Roosevelt, “the wisest man he ever knew,” took care, it seems, not to mention the fact to the college authorities.  When I reproached him with this dereliction, he laughingly replied: 

“Well, I promise not to cheat you the next gift you give us.”

And by a second gift this lapse was repaired after all, but I took care not to entrust the matter directly to him.  The Root Fund of Hamilton[50] is now established beyond his power to destroy.  Root is a great man, and, as the greatest only are he is, in his simplicity, sublime.  President Roosevelt declared he would crawl on his hands and knees from the White House to the Capitol if this would insure Root’s nomination to the presidency with a prospect of success.  He was considered vulnerable because he had been counsel for corporations and was too little of the spouter and the demagogue, too much of the modest, retiring statesman to split the ears of the groundlings.[51] The party foolishly decided not to risk Root.

[Footnote 50:  It amounts to $250,000.]

[Footnote 51:  At the Meeting in Memory of the Life and Work of Andrew Carnegie held on April 25, 1920, in the Engineering Societies Building in New York, Mr. Root made an address in the course of which, speaking of Mr. Carnegie, he said: 

“He belonged to that great race of nation-builders who have made the development of America the wonder of the world....  He was the kindliest man I ever knew.  Wealth had brought to him no hardening of the heart, nor made him forget the dreams of his youth.  Kindly, affectionate, charitable in his judgments, unrestrained in his sympathies, noble in his impulses, I wish that all the people who think of him as a rich man giving away money he did not need could know of the hundreds of kindly things he did unknown to the world.”]