The American Peace Award is awarded to American citizens working to further the cause of world peace.
The American Peace Award is awarded to American citizens working to further the cause of world peace.
The American Peace Award was created in 1923 by Edward Bok, who believed that the United States government was not taking initiative to promote peace in the world. [1] $100,000 was to be awarded to the person submitting "the best practicable plan by which the United States may co-operate with other nations for the achievement and preservation of world peace." [2] The first half of the prize was awarded upon the selection of the plan by a jury, and the remainder upon acceptance by the United States Senate [3] or showing "sufficient popular support". [4] The 1924 American Peace Award received plans from thousands of applicants, [5] and caught the interest of the Senate. [6] [7] [8]
Franklin D. Roosevelt drafted a plan for the contest but did not submit it because his wife Eleanor Roosevelt was selected as a judge for the prize. His plan called for a new world organization that would replace the League of Nations. [9] Although Roosevelt had been the vice presidential candidate on the Democratic ticket of 1920 that supported the League of Nations, by 1924 he was ready to scrap it. His draft of a "Society of Nations" accepted the reservations proposed by Henry Cabot Lodge in the 1919 Senate debate. The new Society would not become involved in the Western Hemisphere, where the Monroe doctrine held sway. It would not have any control over any military forces. Although Roosevelt's plan was never made public, he thought about the problem a great deal, and incorporated some of his 1924 ideas into his design for the United Nations in 1944–1945. [10]
The prize was awarded in February 1924 [11] to Dr. Charles Herbert Levermore, who was secretary of the World's Court League, the League of Nations Union, and the New York Peace Society, and former president of Adelphi College. [12] Levermore's plan suggested the United States adhere to the Permanent Court of International Justice and should extend its cooperation with the League of Nations. [13]
The American Peace Award was established in 2008 as a prize awarded to an American citizen or citizens working to further the cause of world peace, in the spirit of Edward W. Bok's original award. The American Peace Award is awarded by an advisory committee of artists, who present each recipient with an original work of art to honor their efforts. [14]
The League of Nations was the first worldwide intergovernmental organisation whose principal mission was to maintain world peace. It was founded on 10 January 1920 by the Paris Peace Conference that ended the First World War. The main organisation ceased operations on 18 April 1946 when many of its components were relocated into the new United Nations. As the template for modern global governance, the League profoundly shaped the modern world.
Thomas Woodrow Wilson was an American politician and academic who served as the 28th president of the United States from 1913 to 1921. He was a progressive Democrat who previously served as the governor of New Jersey from 1911 to 1913 and as the president of Princeton University from 1902 to 1910. As president, Wilson changed the nation's economic policies and led the United States into World War I. He was the leading architect of the League of Nations, and his progressive stance on foreign policy came to be known as Wilsonianism.
Charles Gates Dawes was an American diplomat and Republican politician who was the 30th vice president of the United States from 1925 to 1929 under Calvin Coolidge. He was a co-recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1925 for his work on the Dawes Plan for World War I reparations.
Henry Cabot Lodge was an American politician, historian, lawyer, and statesman from Massachusetts. A member of the Republican Party, he served in the United States Senate from 1893 to 1924 and is best known for his positions on foreign policy. His successful crusade against Woodrow Wilson's Treaty of Versailles ensured that the United States never joined the League of Nations and his penned conditions against that treaty, known collectively as the Lodge reservations, influenced the structure of the modern United Nations.
This section of the timeline of United States history concern events from 1900 to 1929.
Frank Billings Kellogg was an American lawyer, politician, and statesman who served in the U.S. Senate and as U.S. Secretary of State. He co-authored the Kellogg–Briand Pact, for which he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1929.
Cordell Hull was an American politician from Tennessee and the longest-serving U.S. Secretary of State, holding the position for 11 years (1933–1944) in the administration of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt during most of World War II. Before that appointment, Hull represented Tennessee for two years in the United States Senate and 22 years in the House of Representatives.
Robert Bacon was an American athlete, banker, businessman, statesman, diplomat and Republican Party politician who served as the 39th United States Secretary of State in the Theodore Roosevelt administration from January to March 1909. He also served as Assistant Secretary of State from 1905 to 1909 and Ambassador to France from 1909 to 1912.
William Edgar Borah was an outspoken Republican United States Senator, one of the best-known figures in Idaho's history. A progressive who served from 1907 until his death in 1940, Borah is often considered an isolationist, because he led the Irreconcilables, senators who would not accept the Treaty of Versailles, Senate ratification of which would have made the U.S. part of the League of Nations.
Edward William Bok was a Dutch-born American editor and Pulitzer Prize-winning author. He was editor of the Ladies' Home Journal for 30 years (1889–1919). He also distributed popular homebuilding plans and created Bok Tower Gardens in central Florida.
Charles Herbert Levermore was an American academic and peace activist. He was a founder and the first president of Adelphi University from 1896 to 1912. He won the American Peace Award in 1924. He was corresponding secretary of the World's Court League in 1919, secretary of the League of Nations Union, and secretary of the New York Peace Society. He was a founding member of the Union League in New York City.
The "Four Policemen" was a postwar council with the Big Four that US President Franklin Roosevelt proposed as a guarantor of world peace. Their members were called the Four Powers during World War II and were the four major Allies of World War II: the United Kingdom, the United States, the Soviet Union, and China. Roosevelt repeatedly used the term "Four Policemen" starting in 1942.
Herbert Feis was an American historian, author, and economist who was the Advisor on International Economic Affairs in the US Department of State during the Herbert Hoover and Franklin Roosevelt administrations.
The Woodrow Wilson Foundation was an educational non-profit created in 1921, organized under the laws of New York, for the "perpetuation of Wilson's ideals" via periodic grants to worthy groups and individuals. Franklin D. Roosevelt was the chair of the group's governing National Committee, coordinating fundraising activity of parallel groups in each of the 48 states.
The League to Enforce Peace was a non-state American organization established in 1915 to promote the formation of an international body for world peace. It was formed at Independence Hall in Philadelphia by American citizens concerned by the outbreak of World War I in Europe. Support for the league dissolved and it ceased operations by 1923.
The George Louis Beer Prize is an award given by the American Historical Association for the best book in European international history from 1895 to the present written by a United States citizen or permanent resident. The prize was created in 1923 to honor the memory of George Beer, a prominent historian, member of the U.S. delegation at the 1919 Paris Peace Conference, and senior League of Nations official. Described by Jeffrey Herf, the 1998 laureate, as "the Academy Award" of book prizes for modern European historians, it is one of the most prestigious American prizes for book-length history. The Beer Prize is usually awarded to senior scholars in the profession; the American Historical Association restricts its other distinguished European history award, the Herbert Baxter Adams Prize, to young authors publishing their first substantial work.
Pacifism has manifested in the United States in a variety of forms, and in myriad contexts. In general, it exists in contrast to an acceptance of the necessity of war for national defense.
Esther Everett Lape was a well-known American peace activist and journalist. She wrote in support of immigration and workers' rights, and between the world wars, she was a vocal advocate for the US participation in the World Court. Lape was associated with the Women's Trade Union League and was one of the founders of the League of Women Voters.
The history of U.S. foreign policy from 1913–1933 covers the foreign policy of the United States during World War I and much of the Interwar period. The administrations of Presidents Woodrow Wilson, Warren G. Harding, Calvin Coolidge, and Herbert Hoover successively handled U.S. foreign policy during this period.
The 1923 Draft Treaty of Mutual Assistance was an unsuccessful proposal made by the League of Nations to address the issue of disarmament and security in Europe after World War I. It was rejected by the British government in 1924 and was never adopted.