World War I Participation and The Nobel Peace Prize
Dawes helped support the first Anglo-French Loan to the Entente of $500,000,000. Dawes support was important because the House of Morgan needed public support from a non-Morgan banker. The Morgan banker Lamont said that Dawes' support would "make a position for him in the banking world such as he otherwise could never hope to make." (Loans were seen as possibly violating neutrality, and Wilson was still resisting permitting loans.)
During the First World War, Dawes was commissioned Major, Lieutenant Colonel, and Brigadier General of the Seventeenth Engineers. He served with the American Expeditionary Force as chief of supply procurement and was a member of the Liquidation Commission, United States War Department.
After the war, the U.S. Senate held hearings on overcharges by military suppliers. During heated testimony, Dawes burst out, "Hell and Maria, we weren't trying to keep a set of books over there, we were trying to win a war!" He was later known as "Hell and Maria Dawes" (although he always insisted the expression was "Helen Maria").
Dawes resigned from the Army in 1919. When the Bureau of the Budget was created, he was appointed in 1921 by President Warren G. Harding as its first Director. Hoover appointed him to the Allied Reparations Commission in 1923. For his work on the Dawes Plan, a program to enable Germany to restore and stabilize its economy, Dawes shared the Nobel Peace Prize in 1925. The plan was deemed unworkable and replaced with the Young Plan, which had harsher provisions against Germany.
Read more about this topic: Charles G. Dawes
Famous quotes containing the words world war, world, war, nobel, peace and/or prize:
“I date the end of the old republic and the birth of the empire to the invention, in the late thirties, of air conditioning. Before air conditioning, Washington was deserted from mid-June to September.... But after air conditioning and the Second World War arrived, more or less at the same time, Congress sits and sits while the presidents—or at least their staffs—never stop making mischief.”
—Gore Vidal (b. 1925)
“I am particularly interested in the indications that the people seem to understand and approve the necessity of pursuing the course that will prevent a further effort on the part of the German peoples to continue the struggle for world domination, even though they are thoroughly beaten in this war.”
—Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945)
“This morning the British Ambassador in Berlin handed the German Government a final Note stating that, unless we heard from them by 11 o’clock that they were prepared at once to withdraw their troops from Poland, a state of war would exist between us. I have to tell you now that no such undertaking has been received, and that consequently this country is at war with Germany.”
—Neville Chamberlain (1869–1940)
“Parents can fail to cheer your successes as wildly as you expected, pointing out that you are sharing your Nobel Prize with a couple of other people, or that your Oscar was for supporting actress, not really for a starring role. More subtly, they can cheer your successes too wildly, forcing you into the awkward realization that your achievement of merely graduating or getting the promotion did not warrant the fireworks and brass band.”
—Frank Pittman (20th century)
“War is pillage versus resistance and if illusions of magnitude could be transmuted into ideals of magnanimity, peace might be realized.”
—Marianne Moore (1887–1972)
“In the corrupted currents of this world
Offence’s gilded hand may shove by justice,
And oft ‘tis seen the wicked prize itself
Buys out the law; but ‘tis not so above:
There is no shuffling.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)