Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech
Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech
11 December 1957
The Four Faces of Peace
I cannot think of anything more difficult than to say something
which would be worthy of this impressive and, for me, memorable
occasion, and of the ideals and purposes which inspired the
Nobel Peace Award.
I would like, at the very beginning, to pay my tribute to
the memory of a great man, Alfred Nobel, who made this award
- and others - possible. Seldom in history has any man combined
so well the qualities of idealism and realism as he did -
those of the poet and the practical man of business. We know
all about his dynamite and his explosives and how he lamented
the use to which they would be put. Yet ideas can also be
explosive, and he had many that were good and were deeply
concerned with peace and war. He liked to write and talk about
the "rights of man and universal brotherhood", and no one
worked harder or more unselfishly to realize those ideals,
still so far away.
At this moment I am particularly conscious of the wisdom of
one of his observations that "long speeches will not ensure
peace".
May I also express my great pleasure at being again in Norway,
a country to which my own is so closely bound by ties of friendship,
freedom, and understanding. I have worked in a very close
and cordial way with Norwegian representatives at many international
meetings, and the pleasure I felt at those associations was
equaled only by the profit I always secured from them.
Perhaps I may be pardoned for putting any words I may have
to say about peace within the framework of my own personal
experience. During my lifetime greater and more spectacular
progress has been made in the physical sciences than in many
centuries that preceded it. As a result, the man who lived
in 1507 would have felt more at home in 1907 than one who
died fifty years ago if he came back to life today.
A great gulf, however, has been opened between man's material
advance and his social and moral progress, a gulf in which
he may one day be lost if it is not closed or narrowed. Man
has conquered outer space. He has not conquered himself. If
he had, we would not be worrying today as much as we are about
the destructive possibilities of scientific achievements.
In short, moral sense and physical power are out of proportion.
This imbalance may well be the basic source of the conflicts
of our time, of the dislocations of this "terrible twentieth
century".
All of my adult life has been spent amidst these dislocations,
in an atmosphere of international conflict, of fear and insecurity.
As a soldier, I survived World War I when most of my comrades
did not. As a civilian during the Second War, I was exposed
to danger in circumstances which removed any distinction between
the man in and the man out of uniform. And I have lived since
- as you have - in a period of cold war, during which we have
ensured by our achievements in the science and technology
of destruction that a third act in this tragedy of war will
result in the peace of extinction.
I have, therefore, had compelling reason, and some opportunity,
to think about peace, to ponder over our failures since 1914
to establish it, and to shudder at the possible consequences
if we continue to fail.
I remember particularly one poignant illustration of the futility
and tragedy of war. It was concerned, not with the blood and
sacrifice of battles from 1914-1918, but with civilian destruction
in London in 1941 during its ordeal by bombing.
It was a quiet Sunday morning after a shattering night of
fire and death. I was walking past the smoking ruins of houses
that had been bombed and burned during the night. The day
before they had been a neat row of humble, red brick, workmen's
dwellings. They were now rubble except for the front wall
of one building, which may have been some kind of community
club, and on which there was a plaque that read "Sacred to
the memory of the men of Alice Street who died for peace during
the Great War, 1914-1918". The children and grandchildren
of those men of Alice Street had now in their turn been sacrificed
in the Greater War, 1939-1945. For peace? There are times
when it does not seem so.
True there has been more talk of peace since 1945 than, I
should think, at any other time in history. At least we hear
more and read more about it because man's words, for good
or ill, can now so easily reach the millions.
Very often the words are good and even inspiring, the embodiment
of our hopes and our prayers for peace. But while we all pray
for peace, we do not always, as free citizens, support the
policies that make for peace or reject those which do not.
We want our own kind of peace, brought about in our own way.
The choice, however, is as clear now for nations as it was
once for the individual: peace or extinction. The life of
states cannot, any more than the life of individuals, be conditioned
by the force and the will of a unit, however powerful, but
by the consensus of a group, which must one day include all
states. Today the predatory state, or the predatory group
of states, with power of total destruction, is no more to
be tolerated than the predatory individual.
Our problem, then, so easy to state, so hard to solve, is
how to bring about a creative peace and a security which will
have a strong foundation. There have been thousands of volumes
written by the greatest thinkers of the ages on this subject;
so you will not expect too much from me in a few sketchy and
limited observations. I cannot, I fear, provide you, in the
words of Alfred Nobel, with "some lofty thoughts to lift us
to the spheres".
My aim this evening is a more modest one. I wish to look at
the problem in four of its aspects - my "four faces of peace".
There is peace and prosperity or trade, peace and power, peace
and policy or diplomacy, peace and people.
Peace and Prosperity
One face of peace is reflected in the prosperity of nations.
This is a subject on which thought has changed greatly within
the memories of most of us and is now, I submit, in process
of rapid further change.
Not so long ago prominence was always given to economic factors
as causes of war. That was at a time when people sought more
assiduously than we now do for rational causation in human
behavior. To the philosophers of the nineteenth century it
seemed that there must be a motive of real self-interest,
of personal gain, that led nations into conflict. To some
extent there was. But in this century we have at least learned
to understand more fully the complexity of motives that impel
us both as individuals and as nations. We would be unwise
to take any credit for that. The cynic might well remark that
never has irrationality been so visible as in our times, and
especially in relation to war.
We know now that in modern warfare, fought on any considerable
scale, there can be no possible economic gain for any side.
Win or lose, there is nothing but waste and destruction. Whatever
it is that leads men to fight and suffer, to face mutilation
and death, the motive is not now self-interest in any material
sense.
If, however, we no longer stress so much economic factors
as the direct cause of war, that does not lessen their importance
in the maintenance of a creative and enduring peace. Men may
not now go to war for trade, but lack of trade may help to
breed the conditions in which men do go to war. The connection
is not simple. Rich nations are not necessarily more peace-loving
than poorer nations. You do not have to have poverty and economic
instability; people do not have to be fearful about their
crops or their jobs in order to create the fears and frustrations
and tensions through which wars are made. But poverty and
distress - especially with the awakening of the submerged
millions of Asia and Africa - make the risks of war greater.
It is already difficult to realize that a mere twenty years
ago poverty was taken almost for granted over most of the
earth's surface. There were always, of course, a few visionaries,
but before 1939 there was little practical consideration given
to the possibility of raising the living standards of Asia
and Africa in the way that we now regard as indispensable.
Perhaps only in North America every man feels entitled to
a motor car, but in Asia hundreds of millions of people do
now expect to eat and be free. They no longer will accept
colonialism, destitution, and distress as preordained. That
may be the most significant of all the revolutionary changes
in the international social fabric of our times.
Until the last great war, a general expectation of material
improvement was an idea peculiar to Western man. Now war and
its aftermath have made economic and social progress a political
imperative in every quarter of the globe. If we ignore this,
there will be no peace. There has been a widening of horizons
to which in the West we have been perhaps too insensitive.
Yet it is as important as the extension of our vision into
outer space.
Today continuing poverty and distress are a deeper and more
important cause of international tensions, of the conditions
that can produce war, than previously. On the other hand,
if the new and constructive forces which are at work among
areas and people, stagnant and subdued only a few years ago,
can be directed along the channels of cooperation and peaceful
progress, it should strengthen mankind's resistance to fear,
to irrational impulse, to resentment, to war.
Arnold Toynbee1 voiced this hope and this ideal when he said:
"The twentieth century will be chiefly remembered by future
generations not as an era of political conflicts or technical
inventions, but as an age in which human society dared to
think of the welfare of the whole human race as a practical
objective."
I hope he was not too optimistic.
It is against this background that we should, I suggest, reassess
our attitude to some ideas about which we have of late been
too indifferent. It has been fashionable to look on many of
our nineteenth-century economic thinkers as shallow materialists.
We have, for instance, made light of the moral fervor and
high political purpose that lay behind such an idea as free
trade. Yet the ideals to which Richard Cobden2 gave the most
articulate expression, at least in the English-speaking world,
were not ideals about commerce alone. They visualized a free
and friendly society of nations, for whom free trade was at
once a result and a cause of good relations. It is a bitter
commentary on our twentieth-century society that the very
phrase "free trade" has come to have a hopelessly old-fashioned
and unrealistic ring to it.
We all recognize that in the depressed and disturbed economic
conditions between the wars an upsurge of economic nationalism
was inevitable. But why should so many be so ready to go on
thinking in the same terms when the conditions that produced
them are now different?
We are too inclined to assume that man's today is more like
his yesterday than like the day before yesterday. In some
respects, I submit, the economics of our day are less different
from those of nineteenth-century expansionism than they are
from the abnormal period of depression and restrictionism
that, just because it is nearer in time; still dominates much
of our economic thinking.
The scientific and technological discoveries that have made
war so infinitely more terrible for us are part of the same
process that has knit us all so much more closely together.
Our modern phrase for this is interdependence. In essence,
it is exactly what the nineteenth-century economist talked
about as the advantages of international specialization and
the division of labor. The main difference is that excessive
economic nationalism, erecting its reactionary barriers to
the international division of labor, is far more anomalous
and irrational now than it was when the enlightened minds
of the nineteenth century preached against it and for a time
succeeded in having practiced what they preached.
The higher the common man sets his economic goals in this
age of mass democracy, the more essential it is to political
stability and peace that we trade as freely as possible together,
that we reap those great benefits from the division of labor,
of each man and each region doing what he and it can do with
greatest relative efficiency, which were the economic basis
of nineteenth-century thought and policy. In no country is
this more clearly understood than in Norway and in no country
is the impulse to peace deeper or more widespread.
In this sphere, our postwar record is better than it is fashionable
to recognize. Under the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade3
there has been real progress in reducing trade barriers and
in civilizing the commercial policies of national governments.
The achievement so far has its limits, of course, and there
have been setbacks, but there has been more progress, and
over a wider area, than any of us would have dared to predict
with confidence twelve years ago.
Now the European nations are launching themselves, through
the Common Market and its associated free trade area4, on
an adventure in the economic unification of peoples that a
few years ago would have seemed completely visionary. Is it
any more visionary to foresee a further extension of this
cooperative economic pattern? Is it not time to begin to think
in terms of an economic interdependence that would bridge
the Atlantic, that would at least break down the barrier between
dollar and non-dollar countries which, next only to Iron Curtains,
has hitherto most sharply divided our postwar One World?
You will say that this is far too unrealistic. I can only
reply that in the past decade we have already seen even more
profound revolutions in men's political and social attitudes.
It would be especially tragic if the people who most cherish
ideals of peace, who are most anxious for political cooperation
on a wider than national scale, made the mistake of underestimating
the pace of economic change in our modern world.
Just as we cannot in this day have a stable national democracy
without progress in living standards and a sense that the
community as a whole participates in those standards, without
too great extremes of wealth and poverty, likewise we cannot
have one world at peace without a general social and economic
progress in the same direction. We must have rising living
standards in which all nations are participating to such a
degree that existing inequalities in the international division
of wealth are, at least, not increased. For substantial progress
on those lines we need the degree of efficiency that comes
only with the freest possible movement of commerce through
the world, binding people together, providing the basis of
international investment and expansion, and thereby, I hope,
making for peace.
Peace and Power
I now come to peace and power.
Every state has not only the right but the duty to make adequate
provision for its own defense in the way it thinks best, providing
it does not do so at the expense of any other state. Every
state denies and rejects any suggestion that it acquires military
power for any other purpose than defense. Indeed, in a period
of world tension, fear, and insecurity, it is easy for any
state to make such denial sound reasonable, even if the ultimate
aims and policies of its leaders are other than pacific.
No state, furthermore, unless it has aggressive military designs
such as those which consumed Nazi leaders in the thirties,
is likely to divert to defense any more of its resources and
wealth and energy than seems necessary. The economic burden
of armaments is now almost overpowering, and where public
opinion can bring itself effectively to bear on government,
the pressure is nearly always for the greatest possible amount
of butter and the fewest possible number of guns.
Nevertheless, defense by power as a first obligation on a
state has to be considered in relation to things other than
economics. For one thing - and this is certainly true of smaller
countries - such power, unless it is combined with the defense
forces of other friendly countries, is likely to be futile,
both for protection and for prevention, or for deterrence,
as we call it. This in its turn leads to coalitions and associations
of states. These may be necessary in the world in which we
live, but they do extend the area of a possible war in the
hope that greater and united power will prevent any war. When
they are purely defensive in character, such coalitions can
make for peace by removing the temptation of easy victory.
But they can never be more than a second-best substitute for
the great coalition of the whole United Nations established
to preserve the peace, but now too often merely the battleground
of the cold war.
Furthermore, the force which you and your allies collect for
your own security can, in a bad international climate, increase,
or seem to increase, someone else's insecurity. A vicious
chain reaction begins. In the past, the end result has always
been, not peace, but the explosion of war. Arms, produced
by fear out of international tension, have never maintained
peace and security except for limited periods. I am not arguing
against their short-run necessity. I am arguing against their
long-run effectiveness. At best they give us a breathing space
during which we can search for a better foundation for the
kind of security which would itself bring about arms reduction.
These coalitions for collective defense are limited in area
and exclusive in character. And they provoke counter-coalitions.
Today, for instance, we have now reached the point where two
- and only two - great agglomerations of power face each other
in fear and hostility, and the world wonders what will happen.
If the United Nations were effective as a security agency
- which it is not - these more limited arrangements would
be unnecessary and, therefore, undesirable. But pending that
day, can we not put some force behind the United Nations which
- under the authorization of the Assembly - might be useful
at least for dealing with some small conflicts and preventing
them from becoming great ones?
Certainly the idea of an international police force effective
against a big disturber of the peace seems today unrealizable
to the point of absurdity. We did, however, take at least
a step in the direction of putting international force behind
an international decision a year ago in the Suez crisis. The
birth of this force was sudden and it was surgical. The arrangements
for the reception of the infant were rudimentary, and the
midwives - one of the most important of whom was Norway -
had no precedents or experience to guide them. Nevertheless,
UNEF5, the first genuinely international police force of its
kind, came into being and into action.
It was organized with great speed and efficiency even though
its functions were limited and its authority unclear. And
the credit for that must go first of all to the Secretary-General
of the United Nations6 and his assistants.
Composed of the men of nine United Nations countries from
four continents, UNEF moved with high morale and higher purpose
between national military forces in conflict. Under the peaceful
blue emblem of the United Nations, it brought, and has maintained,
at least relative quiet on an explosive border. It has supervised
and secured a cease-fire.
I do not exaggerate the significance of what has been done.
There is no peace in the area. There is no unanimity at the
United Nations about the functions and future of this force.
It would be futile in a quarrel between, or in opposition
to, big powers. But it may have prevented a brush fire becoming
an all-consuming blaze at the Suez last year, and it could
do so again in similar circumstances in the future.
We made at least a beginning then. If, on that foundation,
we do not build something more permanent and stronger, we
will once again have ignored realities, rejected opportunities,
and betrayed our trust. Will we never learn?
Today, less than ever can we defend ourselves by force, for
there is no effective defense against the all-destroying effect
of nuclear missile weapons. Indeed, their very power has made
their use intolerable, even unthinkable, because of the annihilative
retaliation in kind that such use would invoke. So peace remains,
as the phrase goes, balanced uneasily on terror, and the use
of maximum force is frustrated by the certainty that it will
be used in reply with a totally devastating effect. Peace,
however, must surely be more than this trembling rejection
of universal suicide.
The stark and inescapable fact is that today we cannot defend
our society by war since total war is total destruction, and
if war is used as an instrument of policy, eventually we will
have total war. Therefore, the best defense of peace is not
power, but the removal of the causes of war, and international
agreements which will put peace on a stronger foundation than
the terror of destruction.
Peace and Policy
The third face of peace, therefore, is policy and diplomacy.
If we could, internationally, display on this front some of
the imagination and initiative, determination and sacrifice,
that we show in respect of defense planning and development,
the outlook would be more hopeful than it is. The grim fact,
however, is that we prepare for war like precocious giants
and for peace like retarded pygmies.
Our policy and diplomacy - as the two sides in the cold war
face each other - are becoming as rigid and defensive as the
trench warfare of forty years ago, when two sides dug in,
dug deeper, and lived in their ditches. Military moves that
had been made previously had resulted in slaughter without
gain; so, for a time, all movement was avoided. Occasionally
there was almost a semblance of peace.
It is essential that we avoid this kind of dangerous stalemate
in international policy today. The main responsibility for
this purpose rests with the two great world powers, the United
States and the U.S.S.R. No progress will be made if one side
merely shouts "coexistence" - a sterile and negative concept
- and "parleys at the summit", while the other replies "no
appeasement", "no negotiation without proof of good faith".
What is needed is a new and vigorous determination to use
every technique of discussion and negotiation that may be
available, or, more important, that can be made available,
for the solution of the tangled, frightening problems that
divide today, in fear and hostility, the two power-blocks
and thereby endanger peace. We must keep on trying to solve
problems, one by one, stage by stage, if not on the basis
of confidence and cooperation, at least on that of mutual
toleration and self-interest.
What I plead for is no spectacular meeting of a Big Two or
a Big Three or a Big Four at the summit , where the footing
is precarious and the winds blow hard, but for frank, serious,
and complete exchanges of views - especially between Moscow
and Washington - through diplomatic and political channels.
Essential to the success of any such exchanges is the recognition
by the West that there are certain issues such as the unification
of Germany and the stabilization of the Middle East which
are not likely to be settled in any satisfactory way without
the participation of the U.S.S.R. Where that country has a
legitimate security interest in an area or in a problem, that
must be taken into account.
It is also essential that the Soviet Union, in its turn, recognize
the right of people to choose their own form of government
without interference from outside forces or subversive domestic
forces encouraged and assisted from outside.
A diplomatic approach of this kind involves, as I well know,
baffling complexities, difficulties, and even risks. Nevertheless,
the greater these are, the stronger should be the resolve
and the effort, by both sides and in direct discussions, to
identify and expose them as the first step in their possible
removal.
Perhaps a diplomatic effort of this kind would not succeed.
I have no illusions about its complexity or even its risks.
Speaking as a North American, I merely state that we should
be sure that the responsibility for any such failure is not
ours. The first failure would be to refuse to make the attempt.
The time has come for us to make a move, not only from strength,
but from wisdom and from confidence in ourselves; to concentrate
on the possibilities of agreement, rather than on the disagreements
and failures, the evils and wrongs, of the past.
It would be folly to expect quick, easy, or total solutions.
It would be folly also to expect hostility and fears suddenly
to vanish. But it is equal or even greater folly to do nothing:
to sit back, answer missile with missile, insult with insult,
ban with ban.
That would be the complete bankruptcy of policy and diplomacy,
and it would not make for peace.
Peace and People
In this final phase of the subject, I am not thinking of people
in what ultimately will be their most important relationship
to peace: the fact that more than thirty millions of them
are added to our crowded planet each year. Nor am I going
to dwell at any length on the essential truth that peace,
after all, is merely the aggregate of feelings and emotions
in the hearts and minds of individual people.
Spinoza7 said that "Peace is the vigor born of the virtue
of the soul." He meant, of course, creative peace, the sum
of individual virtue and vigor. In the past, however, man
has unhappily often expressed this peace in ways which were
more vigorous than virtuous.
It has too often been too easy for rulers and governments
to incite man to war. Indeed, when people have been free to
express their views, they have as often condemned their governments
for being too peaceful as for being too belligerent.
This may perhaps have been due to the fact that in the past
men were more attracted by the excitements of conflict and
the rewards of expected victory than they were frightened
by the possibility of injury, pain, and death.
Furthermore, in earlier days, the drama of war was the more
compelling and colorful because it seemed to have a romantic
separation from the drabness of ordinary life. Many men have
seemed to like war - each time - before it began.
As a Canadian psychiatrist, Dr. G.H. Stevenson, put it once:
"People are so easily led into quarrelsome attitudes by some
national leaders. A fight of any kind has a hypnotic influence
on most men. We men like war. We like the excitement of it,
its thrill and glamour, its freedom from restraint. We like
its opportunities for socially approved violence. We like
its economic security and its relief from the monotony of
civilian toil. We like its reward for bravery, its opportunities
for travel, its companionship of men in a man's world, its
intoxicating novelty. And we like taking chances with death.
This psychological weakness is a constant menace to peaceful
behavior. We need to be protected against this weakness, and
against the leaders who capitalize on this weakness."
Perhaps this has all changed now. Surely the glamour has gone
out of war. The thin but heroic red line of the nineteenth
century is now the production line. The warrior is the man
with a test tube or the one who pushes the nuclear button.
This should have a salutary effect on man's emotions. A realization
of the consequences that must follow if and when he does push
the button should have a salutary effect also on his reason.
People and peace have another meaning. How can there be peace
without people understanding each other, and how can this
be if they don't know each other? How can there be cooperative
coexistence, which is the only kind that means anything, if
men are cut off from each other, if they are not allowed to
learn more about each other? So let's throw aside the curtains
against contacts and communication.
I realize that contact can mean friction as well as friendship,
that ignorance can be benevolent and isolation pacific. But
I can find nothing to say for keeping one people malevolently
misinformed about others. More contact and freer communication
can help to correct this situation. To encourage it - or at
least to permit it - is an acid test for the sincerity of
protestations for better relations between peoples.
I believe myself that the Russian people - to cite one example
- wish for peace. I believe also that many of them think that
the Americans are threatening them with war, that they are
in danger of attack. So might I, if I had as little chance
to get objective and balanced information about what is going
on in the United States. Similarly, our Western fears of the
Soviet Union have been partly based on a lack of understanding
or of information about the people of that country.
Misunderstanding of this kind arising from ignorance breeds
fear, and fear remains the greatest enemy of peace.
A common fear, however, which usually means a common foe,
is also, regrettably, the strongest force bringing people
together, but in opposition to something or someone. Perhaps
there is a hopeful possibility here in the conquest of outer
space. Interplanetary activity may give us planetary peace.
Once we discover Martian space ships hovering over earth's
airspace, we will all come together. "How dare they threaten
us like this!" we shall shout, as one, at a really United
Nations!
At the moment, however, I am more conscious of the unhappy
fact that people are more apt to be united for war than for
peace; in fear rather than in hope. Where that unity is based
on popular will, it means that war is total in far more than
a military sense. The nation at war now means literally all
the people at war, and it can add new difficulties to the
making or even the maintenance of peace.
When everybody is directly involved in war, it is harder to
make a peace which does not bear the seeds of future wars.
It was easier, for instance, to make peace with France under
a Napoleon who had been kept apart in the minds of his foes
from the mass of Frenchmen, than with a Germany under Hitler,
when every citizen was felt to be an enemy in the popular
passions of the time.
May I express one final thought. There can be no enduring
and creative peace if people are unfree. The instinct for
personal and national freedom cannot be destroyed, and the
attempt to do so by totalitarian and despotic governments
will ultimately make not only for internal trouble but for
international conflict. Authority under law must, I know,
be respected as the foundation of society and as the protection
of peace. The extension of state power, however, into every
phase of man's life and thought is the abuse of authority,
the destroyer of freedom, and the enemy of real peace.
In the end, the whole problem always returns to people; yes,
to one person and his own individual response to the challenges
that confront him.
In his response to the situations he has to meet as a person,
the individual accepts the fact that his own single will cannot
prevail against that of his group or his society. If he tries
to make it prevail against the general will, he will be in
trouble. So he compromises and agrees and tolerates. As a
result, men normally live together in their own national society
without war or chaos. So it must be one day in international
society. If there is to be peace, there must be compromise,
tolerance, agreement.
We are so far from that ideal that it is easy to give way
to despair and defeatism. But there is no cause for such a
course or for the opposite one that leads to rash and ill-judged
action.
May I quote a very great American, Judge Learned Hand, on
this point: "Most of the issues that mankind sets out to settle,
it never does settle. They are not solved because... they
are incapable of solution, properly speaking, being concerned
with incommensurables. At any rate... the opposing parties
seldom do agree upon a solution; and the dispute fades into
the past unsolved, though perhaps it may be renewed as history
and fought over again. It disappears because it is replaced
by some compromise that, although not wholly acceptable to
either side, offers a tolerable substitute for victory; and
he who would find the substitute needs an endowment as rich
as possible in experience, an experience which makes the heart
generous and provides his mind with an understanding of the
hearts of others."8
Yet even people with generous and understanding hearts, and
peaceful instincts in their normal individual behavior, can
become fighting and even savage national animals under the
incitements of collective emotion. Why this happens is the
core of our problem of peace and war.
That problem, why men fight who aren't necessarily fighting
men, was posed for me in a new and dramatic way one Christmas
Eve in London during World War II. The air raid sirens had
given their grim and accustomed warning. Almost before the
last dismal moan had ended, the antiaircraft guns began to
crash. In between their bursts I could hear the deeper, more
menacing sound of bombs. It wasn't much of a raid, really,
but one or two of the bombs seemed to fall too close to my
room. I was reading in bed and, to drown out or at least to
take my mind off the bombs, I reached out and turned on the
radio. I was fumbling aimlessly with the dial when the room
was flooded with the beauty and peace of Christmas carol music.
Glorious waves of it wiped out the sound of war and conjured
up visions of happier peacetime Christmases. Then the announcer
spoke in German. For it was a German station and they were
Germans who were singing those carols. Nazi bombs screaming
through the air with their message of war and death; German
music drifting through the air with its message of peace and
salvation. When we resolve the paradox of those two sounds
from a single national source, we will, at last, be in a good
position to understand and solve the problem of peace and
war.
* This lecture was delivered by the laureate in the Auditorium of the University of Oslo. The text is taken from Les Prix Nobel en 1957.
1. Arnold J. Toynbee (1889- ), English historian, well known for his 10-volume A Study of History.
2. Richard Cobden (1804-1865), English statesman and economist, known as the "Apostle of Free Trade", who, with John Bright, was primarily responsible for the repeal of England's Corn Laws (1846); actively supported international arbitration and disarmament.
3. Drawn up by an international Conference on Trade and Employment in 1947, it included commitments on over 40,000 different tariff rates and a comprehensive commercial policy code aimed at elimination of discriminating treatment in international commerce.
4. The Common Market (officially the European Economic Community), organized in 1957 by the Benelux countries, France, Italy, and West Germany (Greece became an associate member in 1962), aims at the establishment of an area within which commodities, capital, services, and labor can move freely.
5. United Nations Emergency Force, proposed by Pearson and created by the UN in November, 1956. See Jahn's presentation speech, pp. 124-125.
6. Dag Hammarskjöld (1905-1961), recipient, posthumously, of the Nobel Peace Prize for 1961.
7. Baruch, or Benedict, Spinoza (1632-1677), Dutch philosopher.
8. Learned Hand (1872-1961), American jurist, in "A Plea for the Open Mind and Free Discussion", in The Spirit of Liberty: Papers and Addresses of Learned Hand (New York: Knopf, 1952), p. 281.
Source: Nobel
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