Nicholas M. Butler

Nicholas Murray Butler (April 2, 1862 – December 7, 1947) was the co-winner with Jane Addams of the 1931 Nobel Peace Prize. Butler distinguished himself as president of Columbia University from 1902 to 1945 and as president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace from 1925 to 1945. He was also the Republican Party nominee for Vice President of the United States under President William Howard Taft in 1912 presidential race, when the nominated vice presidential candidate James S. Sherman died in office a few days before the election.

Butler was born in Elizabeth, New Jersey to manufacturer Henry Butler and Mary Murray Butler. He enrolled in Columbia College (which became Columbia University in 1896) and earned his Bachelor of Arts degree in 1882 at the young age of twenty, his master's degree in 1883, and his doctorate in 1884. It is these accomplishments, among others, that lended credibility to the epithet Nicholas Miraculous, a term coined by Theodore Roosevelt.

In 1885, he studied in Paris and Berlin and became a lifelong friend of future Secretary of State Elihu Root. Through Root he also became acquainted with Roosevelt and William Howard Taft. In the fall of that same year, Butler accepted a position on the staff of Columbia's philosophy department.

In 1887, he became the co-founder and President of the New York School for the Training of Teachers, which later affiliated with Columbia University and was renamed Teachers College, Columbia University. Throughout the 1890s Butler served on the New Jersey Board of Education and participated in forming the College Entrance Examination Board.

In 1901, he was installed as acting president of Columbia University and formally assumed the presidency in 1902. He remained in that office for forty-two years. During Butler's presidency, the university expanded its campus, erected a number of new buildings and added several new schools and departments. Among the innovations he oversaw was the opening of the Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center, the first academic medical center in the world.

Butler was a delegate to each Republican National Convention from 1888 to 1936. In the 1912 presidential election, Butler was Taft's running mate on the Republican ticket. In 1916, Butler failed in an effort to secure the Republican presidential nomination for Elihu Root. Butler himself attempted unsuccessfully to secure the Republican nomination for President in 1920 and 1928.

Butler became disillusioned with the negative effects he believed the 1920 national prohibition of alcohol was having on the country. He became active in the successful effort to bring about the repeal of prohibition in 1933.

Butler also chaired the Lake Mohonk Conference on International Arbitration that met periodically from 1907 to 1912. In this time he was appointed president of the American branch of International Conciliation. Butler was also instrumental in persuading Andrew Carnegie to make the initial investment in the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace with $10 million. Butler became head of international education and communication, founded the European branch of the Endowment headquartered in Paris, and was President of the Endowment for twenty years.

Continuing the clear sense that he was trusted by the many internationalists in power, Butler was made President of the elite Anglo-American integration society, the Pilgrims Society. He served as President of the Pilgrims from 1928 to 1946. Butler was president of The American Academy of Arts and Letters from 1928â€"1941.

Butler married in 1887 and had one daughter from that marriage. His wife died in 1903 and he married again in 1907. In 1940, Butler completed his autobiography with the publication of the second volume of Across the Busy Years. When Butler became almost blind in 1945 at the age of eighty-three, he resigned from the posts he held and died two years later. Butler is buried at Cedar Lawn Cemetery, in Paterson, New Jersey

Columbia University named its main library building and a faculty apartment building in Butler's honor, along with a major prize in philosophy.

Along with Butler's many accomplishments came resentment from many, regarding him as arrogant. In 1939, a former student of Butler, Rolfe Humphries, was asked to contribute a piece for Poetry. He was given the title ("Draft Ode for a Phi Beta Kappa Occasion"), and asked to follow a format of blank verse and one classical reference per line. Following these provisos, Humphries penned the infamous acrostic:

Niobe's daughters yearn to the womb again,
Ionians bright and fair, to the chill stone;
Chaos in cry, Actaeon's angry pack,
Hounds of Molussus, shaggy wolves driven

Over Ampsanctus' vale and Pentheus' glade,
Laelaps and Ladon, Dromas, Canace,â€"
As these in fury harry brake and hill
So the great dogs of evil bay the world.

Memory, Mother of Muses, be resigned
Until King Saturn comes to rule again!
Remember now no more the golden day
Remember now no more the fading gold,
Astraea fled, Proserpina in hell;
You searchers of the earth be reconciled!

Because, through all the blight of human woe,
Under Robigo's rust, and Clotho's shears,
The mind of man still keeps its argosies,
Lacedaemonian Helen wakes her tower,

Echo replies, and lamentation loud
Reverberates from Thrace to Delos Isle;
Itylus grieves, for whom the nightingale
Sweetly as ever tunes her Daulian strain.
And over Tenedos the flagship burns.

How shall men loiter when the great moon shines
Opaque upon the sail, and Argive seas
Rear like blue dolphins their cerulean curves?
Samos is fallen, Lesbos streams with fire,
Etna in rage, Canopus cold in hate,
Summon the Orphic bard to stranger dreams.

And so for us who raise Athene's torch.
Sufficient to her message in this hour:
Sons of Columbia, awake, arise!

Upon discovery, an irate Poetry editor ran the following editorial:

"Not being accustomed to hold manuscripts up to the mirror or to test them for cryptograms, the editors recently accepted and printed a poem containing a concealed scurrilous phrase aimed at a well-known person. This was not called to their attention until several weeks after the issue had been published. The phrase in question is puerile and uninteresting, and would not be referred to except that it is necessary to disclaim editorial responsibility. Apparently it is also necessary to state a principle which one would have though obvious; namely, that any contributor who allows such matter to be printed without the editors' knowledge is guilty of a serious breach of confidence, and will automatically disbar himself from the magazine."

The ban was lifted in 1941, when three of Humphries' poems were published.

Works

Between Two Worlds, 1934

Biography

*Michael Rosenthal, Nicholas Miraculous: The Amazing Career of the Redoubtable Dr. Nicholas Murray Butler, Farrar, Straus and Giroux 2006, ISBN 0374299943

See also

* U.S. presidential election, 1912

External links

*Nobel Prize biography
*IMDb biography for Nicholas Murray Butler