John W. Foster, former Secretary of State, who had been in New York a short time before as a member of a committee to provide for a public meeting urging the ratification of the arbitration treaties, had made an appointment for me to meet Secretary Hay for a conference regarding them. I met Mr. Foster at the Cosmos Club and went with him to meet Mr. Hay at the latter's residence. Hay, as usual, met us in his gracious way and we discussed the subject from all sides. My main concern was that these little arbitration treaties, which excepted questions of "vital interest and national honor," should not have the effect of abridging the broader provisions of the Hague Treaty. I had brought with me a draft of a treaty which guarded against such contingencies, with which Mr. Foster seemed to be in agreement.
Hay said he fully caught my idea, but that it had been desired to make all of these treaties alike and to conform with the one between France and Great Britain. He said it would be difficult enough, as it was, to get these treaties through the Senate, as there was considerable opposition, and therefore it was advisable to have these treaties with the several Powers identical; otherwise separate arguments would be made against each of the treaties. The Secretary asked me, however, to leave with him the draft I had prepared, saying that it might prove very useful to him.
The final upshot was that these treaties, to which Hay had devoted so much care and thought during his last months in Washington, and by which he hoped to lessen the likelihood of war throughout the world, were violently opposed in the Senate on the ground that they deprived it of its constitutional rights. Senators Knox and Spooner and their followers took the view that every separate agreement to arbitrate under these treaties must be submitted to the Senate. An amendment to this effect emasculated the main purposes of the treaty and left the subject of arbitration substantially as it would be without any treaties. As Hay stated, Roosevelt saw the situation plainly enough and decided not to submit the treaties for ratification by the other Powers.
On my return home from Turkey, the New York Peace Society, of which I had been the president until I entered the Cabinet in 1906, and whose membership and activities had been very much enlarged under my successor, Andrew Carnegie, gave me a reception on January 7, 1910, at the Hotel Plaza, in New York. Mr. Carnegie, who was earnestly and intensely devoted to the cause of international peace, and who had donated the necessary money for the construction of the Peace Palace at The Hague, presided at this reception, and made one of his characteristic addresses. The subject of my talk was "The Threatening Clouds of War," as they appeared to me to be gathering in the Near East and in the Balkans.
It seemed to me that the most timely public service I could possibly render during this period was to help arouse public opinion to a sense of the imperative need of a newer view of world relations, and a genuine public demand for an international understanding and machinery with which peace might be maintained.
"World Peace" was therefore my subject when, on April 13th of the same year, the Authors' Club tendered me a dinner "in recognition of my public services at home and abroad." It was presided over by the veteran author and publisher, Henry Holt, who nominated Mr. Carnegie as toastmaster. Speeches were made by our ambassador to Berlin, David Jayne Hill, by Rev. Dr. Thomas R. Slicer, Edward M. Shepard, Professor William P. Trent, of Columbia University, and several others.
Though the Authors' Club has a comparatively small membership, limited to members of the craft, yet there have sprung from its ranks a number of our most eminent diplomatists, such as John Hay, Andrew D. White, General Horace Porter, David Jayne Hill, Dr. Henry van Dyke, Seth Low, and Frederick W. Holls. The last two were delegates to the First Hague Peace Conference.
Determined to make the most of the growing popular agitation for the promotion of international arbitration and peace, Mr. Carnegie soon afterwards organized a great peace meeting which was held in Carnegie Hall, New York City. The big hall was packed from pit to dome, and thousands were unable to gain admission. The meeting was opened by Mr. Carnegie, as presiding officer, and he was followed by Baron d'Estournelles de Constant. In my address I specially emphasized neutral duties in time of war and the inhibition upon neutrals to lend money to belligerents pending war as being quite as much an unneutral act as the selling of ships of war and armaments, as had been usually the case in the past when money thus borrowed was used for that very purpose.