Elihu Root

Since WAIS is devoted to world and international affairs, it has a special interest in this bio, sent by John Gehl, of the distinguished American lawyer, statesman and winner of the 1912 Nobel Peace Prize Elihu Root (1845-1937), who served the United States as Secretary of War in the William McKinley-Theodore Roosevelt cabinet and Secretary of State in the second Roosevelt administration. After his cabinet service, Root was elected Republican senator from New York, serving from 1909 to 1915. In 1910 Root became the first president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, continuing the work for world peace that had marked his entire public career and shortly earned him the 1912 Nobel Prize for Peace. In 1915 he declined to run again for the Senate, choosing instead the role of elder statesman. Woodrow Wilson appointed him ambassador extraordinary to head a special diplomatic mission to Russia in 1917, and later under President Harding Root became a delegate to the Washington Naval Conference of 1921-1922, where he helped draft the Five-Power Treaty limiting naval armament. Root was born in Clinton, New York, the son of a professor of mathematics at Hamilton College. He attended Hamilton and in 1864 was graduated first in his class, and then taught school for one year before earning a law degree from the New York University Law School. He next practiced law and by age thirty had established himself as a prominent lawyer specializing in corporate affairs. In a thirty-year legal career he became a wealthy man, acting as counsel to banks, railroads, and some of the leading financiers of the day. While he had dabbled in local Republican politics in New York, Root was relatively unknown as a political figure when he was invited into the McKinley cabinet as secretary of war. McKinley wanted a lawyer and not a military man because the war department was in serious need of administrative reorganization. In short order, Root established new procedures for promotion, founded the War College, enlarged West Point, opened schools for special branches of the service, created a general staff, strengthened control over the National Guard, and restored discipline within the department. Root's record as Secretary of State was equally impressive. He removed the consular service from the "spoils system," putting it under Civil Service. He also demonstrated a superior diplomatic touch in dealing with a series of important foreign policy matters requiring attention in the Far East, Latin America, the Caribbean, and Europe. Historians generally define Root's most important legacy to be his conviction that American leadership in world affairs demands the existence of a strong military and a highly professional diplomatic service. [See http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0374179395/newsscancom/ref=nos im -- RH: In the Puritan tradition, Americans often gave their children Old Testament names. But Elihu? He appears briefly, makes a speech denouncing Job for describing God as a tyrant, and then he disappears. Perhaps the moral is. Job, stop complaining!