American elites still pursued the broader project of making such treaties in the aftermath of this bitter experience. The Republican secretary of state and later New York senator Elihu Root was a fanatic for arbitration in order to keep the United States out of European wars. (He did not believe the concept should apply to the colonial pacification of his country’s new Philippines holdings.) Root even won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1912 for arbitration work. U.S. interest in international law exploded, with professional associations formed and new journals founded.
