part0013

“Perhaps the most tragic thing about mankind is that we are all dreaming about some magical garden over the horizon, instead of enjoying the roses that are right outside today.”

The year 1914, on the very eve of World War I, Andrew Carnegie was trying his best to stave off the inevitable. The first sparks of the war had already been ignited when a disgruntled Serbian nationalist decided to assassinate the archduke of Austria, Franz Ferdinand. This murder then led to the inevitable crisis produced by the international entanglement of the era which saw the formation of two opposed factions—those supporting the Austrians and those allied against them—squaring off in a catastrophic global showdown.

It was precisely the thing that Andrew Carnegie was actively attempting to avoid with his talk of forming a League of Nations that could talk out any tensions or ill will before it led to horrific war. As a last-ditch effort for peace, Carnegie attempted to place himself as the international go-between of the major world powers, as a final effort at remediation. In pursuing these efforts, Carnegie soon came to believe that personally convincing the Kaiser to cease hostilities was the true key to averting the crisis.

Some have even come to claim that Carnegie offered to bribe the Kaiser with several million dollars to get him to agree to back down. But whatever the case may be, the efforts made to beseech the Kaiser ultimately failed, and the war proceeded in full force as scheduled. The disappointment in the current state of events was clarified in a message sent from Robert Franks to Andrew Carnegie’s secretary that read in part, “The war news is terrible and shocking. I do feel so sorry for Mr. C. after having peace so close to his grasp.”

Until this point, Andrew Carnegie had started to retire more and more to his retreat in the Scottish countryside, his idyllic Skibo Castle. This gem of the Scottish Highlands was his escape, but upon hearing the news of the outbreak of war, Carnegie decided to travel to America; he would never return to his homeland again. His birthday that November was a rather sad affair as well. He invited reporters to his library for a conversation, as was his usual birthday routine, but Carnegie admitted to them that the war had shaken his “proverbial optimism about the goodness of the world.”

Just as Robert Franks’ message had suggested, Andrew Carnegie was indeed quite inconsolable as the war he had tried so hard to prevent completely engulfed Europe. Suffering from anxiety attacks and feelings of great depression, Carnegie was now as it were desperate for his third act in life. He was already a great businessman and philanthropist, but he had tried and failed to be a peacemaker; he now needed a third rail on which he could place all of his unbridled ambition.

It wouldn’t be until around the time of his 82nd birthday that Carnegie would receive the birthday gift that he wanted—an end to the war to end all wars. On November 11, 1918, World War I was finally over, at the cost of just over 16 million lives. Andrew Carnegie could only hope and pray that the tragedy of the Great War would not be repeated. In that sense it could be said that it is rather fortunate that Mr. Carnegie would not live to see the rise of Fascism that led the globe down the road to World War II.

Andrew Carnegie was a dreamer, and he yearned for a world in which his dreams could be fulfilled. He felt that he had been blessed with a great surplus of wealth and that it had been placed upon his shoulders to use it for the betterment of humankind. But sadly, all of the libraries, art museums, and philanthropic trusts he could muster were never quite enough to completely enlighten the dark heart of man and bring about the peaceful brotherhood Andrew Carnegie so desired.