A WORLD CENTER FOR PEACEHendrik Christian Andersen
The Independent 84 (October 1915):152.
Andersen was an American expatriate sculptor working in Rome when he conceived the idea of a World lCenter of Communication. He enlisted the help of a group of French architects and artists under the direction of Ernest Hébrard to prepare the very detailed designs for this city. The results were published in an elaborate book issued in 1913. In this anthology there is a review of the publication and the concept by A. Trystan EdwardsReal peace is brought about only thru education, and after this terrible war is at an end, education will receive a new impetus. It will work on broad lines, not only individuals but nations will feel its greater power. For this purpose a World Center of Communication will be more and more necessary....The main object of this city is to facilitate the endeavors of national expansion by enabling every nation to understand the others better thru intimacy, fellowship and more open moral, economic and spiritual relations. It is a city built to concentrate the energies of peoples and spread them in freedom to all parts of the earth; a city to become the center of human inspiration; a city to untangle the ever-increasing complexity of questions that arise in all countries, the settlement of which is essential to the welfare of all humanity; a city to preserve the highest accomplishments of all peoples in all parts of the earth; a city that will endeavor to pacify judicially all international disputes and advance harmonious relations on a practical and economic basis; a convenient, open, free city, to belong to all the nations and facilitate their intercourse. A World Clearing House. A spot consecrated to facilitating every form of science and human progress, in which the nations could come together, study and settle their problems in relation to one another.
Such a city has been planned in every detail, and we hold it out to the whole world with its temples and walls, its universities and congress buildings for law and criminology, medicine and hygiene, agriculture, transportation, commerce and industry, electricity and invention, the sciences and all branches of human culture, with its art palaces and schools of art, its stadium and gymnasia, its world press to serve as voice for the peoples, with doors open to the whole human family and avenues free to the pilgrims of the earth.
The plans of this city have been presented in book form to the rulers of the leading nations as well as to their leading libraries and universities. And from no quarter where the work has been presented has an objection to the construction of this city been made. In Europe such men as Léon Bourgeois, former President of the Council,senator and member of The Hague Court; Charles Richet, winner of the Nobel Prize; Gaston Darboux, Secrétaire perpétuel de l'Académie des Sciences; Louis Liard, vice-rector of the University of Paris; Baron d'Estournelles de Constant, senator and member of The Hague Court; Baron Pierre de Coubertin, founder of the modern Olympic Games; the Prince of Monaco; the King of Belgium; Henri La Fontaine, head of the Union of International Associations at Brussels, senator and winner of the Nobel Prize; Paul Otlet, secretary of the Union of International Associations; Wilhelm Foerster, director of the Royal Observatory at Berlin; Wilhelm Ostwald, professor emeritus at Leipzig, and Ernst Haeckel of Jena, favor and uphold the idea.
It is encouraging to feel that no opposition is made to the proposition of establishing a World Center of Communication, and that many people in the European nations are confident that its establishment would in a practical and logical way facilitate the expansion of their interests commercially as well as morally and spiritually, and that such a World Clearing House should have a central administration dignified in aspect and practical in plan. Rome, Italy
Selected, scanned, edited, provided with headnotes, and formatted as a web document by John W. Reps, Professor Emeritus, Department of City and Regional Planning, West Sibley Hall, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York 14853, USA. Tel: (607) 255-5391, Fax: (607) 255-6681, E-mail: jwr2@cornell.edu To Top of Page To Homepage