Abstract
On 21 July 1921, the foundation stone for the new university library at Louvain was laid. The Times declared that ‘today the eyes of the whole scholastic world are turned upon Louvain and its university.’1 Present at the ceremony were the King and Queen of Belgium, France’s wartime president Raymond Poincaré, Marshal Pétain, numerous ambassadors and ‘hundreds of scholars of distinction’ from French, English, Dutch, and American — but not German — universities. Despite the list of eminent attendees, the foundation stone was laid by America’s self-styled ‘unofficial ambassador to Europe’, Nicholas Murray Butler.2 In context, this was not surprising; Butler had overseen an America-wide campaign to raise university funds towards the reconstruction of the library, while he had also secured money in his capacity as director of Intercourse and Education at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Following the failure of the United States Senate to ratify the Treaty of Versailles which ensured that America would not join the League of Nations, Butler’s continued commitment to Europe made him a figure of significance.
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Notes
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© 2015 Tomás Irish
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Irish, T. (2015). Internationalism after the War, 1918–25. In: The University at War, 1914–25. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137409461_9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137409461_9
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