[58] Mr. Carnegie does not mention the fact that in December, 1910, he gave to a board of trustees $10,000,000, the revenue of which was to be administered for "the abolition of international war, the foulest blot upon our civilization." This is known as the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. The Honorable Elihu Root is president of the board of trustees.
[59] Mr. Carnegie received also the Grand Cross Order of Orange-Nassau from Holland, the Grand Cross Order of Danebrog from Denmark, a gold medal from twenty-one American Republics and had doctors' degrees from innumerable universities and colleges. He was also a member of many institutes, learned societies and clubs—over 190 in number.
[60] Additional gifts, made later, brought this gift up to $3,750,000.
[61] Mr. Carnegie refers to the gift of ten million dollars to the Carnegie United Kingdom Trust merely in connection with Earl Grey. His references to his gifts are casual, in that he refers only to the ones in which he happens for the moment to be interested. Those he mentions are merely a part of the whole. He gave to the Church Peace Union over $2,000,000, to the United Engineering Society $1,500,000, to the International Bureau of American Republics $850,000, and to a score or more of research, hospital, and educational boards sums ranging from $100,000 to $500,000. He gave to various towns and cities over twenty-eight hundred library buildings at a cost of over $60,000,000. The largest of his gifts he does not mention at all. This was made in 1911 to the Carnegie Corporation of New York and was $125,000,000. The Corporation is the residuary legatee under Mr. Carnegie's will and it is not yet known what further sum may come to it through that instrument. The object of the Corporation, as defined by Mr. Carnegie himself in a letter to the trustees, is:
"To promote the advancement and diffusion of knowledge and understanding among the people of the United States by aiding technical schools, institutions of higher learning, libraries, scientific research, hero funds, useful publications and by such other agencies and means as shall from time to time be found appropriate therefor."
The Carnegie benefactions, all told, amount to something over $350,000,000—surely a huge sum to have been brought together and then distributed by one man.
[62] "Yesterday we had a busy day in Toronto. The grand event was a dinner at six o'clock where we all spoke, A.C. making a remarkable address.... I can't tell you how I am enjoying this. Not only seeing new places, but the talks with our own party. It is, indeed, a liberal education. A.C. is truly a 'great' man; that is, a man of enormous faculty and a great imagination. I don't remember any friend who has such a range of poetical quotation, unless it is Stedman. (Not so much range as numerous quotations from Shakespeare, Burns, Byron, etc.) His views are truly large and prophetic. And, unless I am mistaken, he has a genuine ethical character. He is not perfect, but he is most interesting and remarkable; a true democrat; his benevolent actions having a root in principle and character. He is not accidentally the intimate friend of such high natures as Arnold and Morley." (Letters of Richard Watson Gilder, edited by his daughter Rosamond Gilder, p. 374. New York, 1916.)
[63] Triumphant Democracy, or Fifty Years' March of the Republic. London and New York, 1886.
[64] Campbell-Bannerman was chosen leader of the Liberal Party in December, 1898.
[65] Mr. Carnegie had received no less than fifty-four Freedoms of cities in Great Britain and Ireland. This was a record—Mr. Gladstone coming second with seventeen.