American Brought Peace In Tripoli?

New York Times 100 years ago today, October 26, 1912:
G. D. M. Peixotto, Artist, Now on His Way Here, Tells of Ending War for Turkey.
PROMISED FUNDS FOR NAVY
Promising Turks These Would Be Available Here — Has Documents, He Says, to Show How He Did It.Special Cable to The New York Times.
    BERLIN, Oct. 25.— On board the Red Star liner Zeeland there will arrive next week in New York a young American, George D. M. Peixotto, who asserts that he is the man who brought the war between Turkey and Italy to an end.
    Mr. Peixotto is not a politician; he is a painter. His place of domicile in the past two or three years has been Berlin, where he became a great friend of the Young Turk leader, Major Enver Bey, who led the forlorn Ottoman hope in Tripoli.
    Mr. Peixotto, it is said, out of friendship for Enver Bey, and a desire to bring him back to Europe at the earliest possible moment, conceived the idea last Summer of taking the matter of the Turko-Italian peace negotiations in his own hands, and made straightway for Constantinople with that end in view. After spending several more or less fruitful weeks in conferring at the Sublime Porte in an endeavor to induce the Government to agree to terms acceptable to the Italian victors, he journeyed to Rome for conferences with Signor Giolitti, the Italian Prime Minister, and obtained from him certain personal guarantees of concessions in case the Turks signed the peace preliminaries.
    The next scene of Mr. Peixotto's activities, it is stated, was Paris, where he began negotiations with the Ottoman Ambassador to France. The argument which. Mr. Peixotto says, he used with the greatest effect was an assurance to the Turkish officials that American money would eventually be at their disposal for the creation of a new Ottoman navy. He says he advised the Turks to give way in Tripoli, no matter how their pride suffered or their prestige was diminished, and to try to regain everything they had lost in the unequal combats there in smashing victories against their enemies in the Balkans.
    Mr. Peixotto declares that the unofficial private efforts which occupied him since July did more to end the hostilities between the Italians and the Turks than all the official diplomatic efforts which went on throughout the Summer and Autumn. He says he is in possession of documentary evidence of this from Emperors, Kings, and Prime Ministers, and even from the Pope, whom, he says, he also interviewed in the course of his peace peregrinations.
    Mr. Peixotto is said to be a warm friend of Jules Cambon, the French Ambassador at Berlin, who, it is stated, provided him with many credentials for his self-appointed mission.
    George D. M. Peixotto is an American artist living in Paris. He was first mentioned in connection with the proposals to bring about peace on Aug. 10, when The Times published a dispatch from its correspondent in London, which stated that Mr. Peixotto would probably succeed in ending hostilities, where diplomatic efforts to the same ends had repeatedly failed. The reference to the American artist in The Times contained in the dispatch was this:
    "While it is an admitted fact that the regular diplomatic efforts which have been made at various times to end the war have completely failed, it is no secret that unofficial negotiations are in progress, and in these, according to good authority, an American citizen is taking a rôle. He is George D. M. Peixotto. Naturally the exact character of his mission and on whose behalf he is acting are shrouded in mystery, but it is shrewdly guessed that the Russian Government is not unaware of the efforts he is making to discover a basis on which the hostile powers may come to terms." Mr. Peixotto is also well-known in this country. The mural paintings in the New Amsterdam Theatre here are his work, and a number of other examples exist in Washington, include a life size portrait of one of the Presidents. The artist was born in Kentucky, studied in Paris and during recent years has lived in Europe. His brother is the general agent in Paris of the Equitable Life Assurance Society. His father was a Consul General in Japan.