Peace, Perfect Peace!

The Story of the Nobel Peace Prize

MOST people are aware of the existence of the Nobel
Peace prize. They read, or hear, a news bulletin
every year, giving the names of the fortunate recipients.

Rather fewer know that the founder of this bequest was Alfred
Nobel, the millionaire explosives manufacturer. In 1896,
£1,750,000 was left by him to. endow a trust fund divided to
produce five prizes of about £8,000 each annually
to a chosen physicist, chemist, medical man, writer and/or
Pacifist who, in the opinion of the selectors, had best
served the cause of peace.

Same may find it rather surprising that Alfred Nobel,
who made a fortune from war, should donate a large sum
to what might be considered the pursuit of Peace.

The facts show that, whatever his intentions, the
Nobel Peace Prize has not had the slightest effect in pre-
venting or lessening the incidence of War. Indeed, Alfred
Nobel is but one of a number of paradoxical figures of
this modem topsy-turvey world.

No less so is Albert Einstein, a Nobel Prize winner,
who wrote to President Roosevelt in 1939 drawing atten-
tion to the power of the Atom Bomb, and urging him to
set science working on it in case the Nazi's got in first;
only to say afterwards that "if World War III is fought
with atom-armed missiles then World War IV will be
fought with clubs," and sign the famous scientists declara-
tion with Bertrand Russell, in July 1955, predicting that
radio-active dust could end the human race.

Alfred was the second son of Immanuel Nobel, who
had a small chemical works in Stockholm in the sixties of
the last century

The family managed to land a contract for the Russian
Navy in the Crimean War and for mines to be sown in the
Baltic. These in fact did no harm, as they never went off.

ln 1870 Alfred took over and moved to Hamburg.
During this period the firm invented a powerful new explo-
sive, which he christened "Dynamite." This material was
the atomic bomb of that day, compared to kid's stuff like
gunpowder. He later founded the British Dynamite Co.,
which made 1,000 per cent. profit in six years.

The first dynamite weapons were shells poured into
densely populated Montmartre, by the German Army dur-
ing the siege of Paris, in the time of the Commune.

"Surely," said those who witnessed the devastating power
of the high-explosive shells, "this must make war impossible,
for who would dare to use such a means of wholesale
extermination. Fear of reprisals would prevent it."

But fear of reprisals did not prevent it being used,
among others, by the Russian Anarchists who seized the
new weapon with enthusiasm, and assassinated the Czar
with it. This, and a number of disastrous accidents in fac-
tories and mines, placed its manufacture and sale under
control.

Same years later, Alfred Nobel, now, like so many
millionaries, lonely and thoroughly miserable, established
in an office in that same city of Paris he had helped to
batter down, advertised for a personal secretary for a few
days work, The advertisement was answered 'by an Aus-
trian countess, who needed money because she had been
cut off for marrying a journalist called Arthur von Suttner. '
Subsequently she went into exile with her husband, to the
Caucasus during the Russian annexation. Her experiences
there made her an ardent Pacifist. With her husband's
help she published a book, in the form or a personal diary;
an impassioned protest against the injustice, corruption,
and bestiality of war.

The hero of the story is a conscientious objector, who
is shot by the Germans as a French spy during the 1870
war. It was called "Die Waffen Nieder, or "Lay down
the Arms." The Baroness became world famous. The
book rocketed through Europe. The Third World Peace
Congress in Rome elected her World President.

Previously, Nobel had told the Countess that he liked
"novels with a message," "propaganda novels," so she
sent him one - her own. Nobel replied that he liked the
book, and sent a donation to the Peace League's funds,
and a suggested "peace plan."

By this time his Head Office was in Zurich. Baroness
Bertha hurried there to try to gain his full support for the
Peace League. According to Egon Larsen, from whose
interesting book "Men Who Shaped the Future" (Phoenix
House, London), these details are culled, the following dis-
cussion took place:

Dr. Alfred Nobel: "Perhaps my explosive factories
will end war sooner than your Congresses. On the day
when two army corps will be able to annihilate each other
in a flash all civilised nations will recoil in horror - and
disband their armies."

"No! they will not, cried Bertha, for each of them will
rely 'on its bigger and' better bombs, each of them will try to
annihilate the enemy first. We, the peoples of 'the world,
must force our governments to lay down arms."

"I wish I could prove my theory to you here and now,
Baroness," smiled Nobel. "I wish I could produce sone
material . . . some machine of terrible power of annihilation
and devastation that would make wars altogether impossible."

"It would not make them impossible Mr. Nobel, that
is the horrible truth we must face. People will go on
slaughtering one another, and you armament kings will in-
crease the efficiency of their arms, because that's your profit-
able business."

Alfred Nobel: "I don't think a mere increase in the
deadliest of weapons would bring world peace, Baroness, A
few more soldiers on the battlefields will die - that's all. No,
I am thinking of something more efficient; weapons that will
make war as deadly for the civilians at home as for the
troops in the front line.

Let the sword of DamocIes hang over every head and
you will witness a miracle; they will all clamour for peace.

But perhaps dynamite is not sufficient to achieve that
result, even if one day it will be dropped from the air on
the capitals of the world. I think we need something more
powerful. Perhaps war would stop instantly if that weapon
were Bacteria.

And there, for the time being, the matter was left.
Subsequently, after considerable illness, Nobel wrote the
following to the Baroness in November, 1895.

"I should like to allot part of my fortune to the forma-
tion of a Prize 'Fund. This prize would be awarded to the
man or woman who had done most to advance the idea of
general peace in Europe. Jf we have failed, at the end of
30 years, to reform the present system of international rela-
tions, we shall inevitably revert to barbarism."

He died in San Remo in 1896. In 1953 the Nobel
Peace Prize was awarded to Sir Winston Churchill.

HORATIO.

Since this article appeared in the October 1955 Socialist Standard,
ignoble Peace Prize recipients include Kissinger, Mother Teresa,
Arafat, Peres, Rabin & Obama.