PEACE PRIZE

Evening Star, Issue 20973, 11 December 1931, Page 9

PEACE PRIZE

THE NOBEL AWARDS TWO AMERICANS SELECTED Pr«s* Association —By Telegraph —Copyright. ! NEW YORK, December 9. The Norwegian Consul-General announced that Professor Nicholas Murray Butler and Miss Jane Addams have been cojointly awarded the 1931 NobeJ Peace Prize. Professor Butler is president of Columbia University and other educational institutions. He is a well-known publicist and author. Miss Addams is a noted Chicago social worker and author. She is president of the Women’s International League for Peace, and has presided over various conventions since 1915. Miss Addams is at present ill in Baltimore Hospital, and might possibly have to undergo a serious operation., NICHOLAS MURRAY BUTLER Born at Elizabeth, New Jersey, sixty-three years ago, Dr Butler is an American by origin, but a citizen of the world by choice and adoption. Prominent as he is in American politics, he has nevbr been able to restrict himself to a merely nationalist outlook (wrote a correspondent of the ‘ Sunday Observer ’). There has always been for him a and no one has ever’ better exemplified the worth of Nurse Cavell’s plea that “Patriotism -is not enough.”- His most characteristic message has been the need of what he has called “ the international mind.”_ As author, educationist, administration, politician, and publicist, Dr Butler has got through a remarkable amount of public work. His industry, energy, enthusiasm, and executive ability are quite out of the common. _ He is the president of one of America’s greatest universities —the Columbia University of New York. He is the president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace; along with Mr Elibu Root, he has for many years been the driving force of this remarkable body. For five successive years, from 1907 to. 1912, he presided over the Lake Mohonk Conference, out of which grew the movement for the celebration of the 100 Years’ Peace amongst English-speaking Peoples. It was very largely due to him that the fine St. Gaudens statue _ of Abraham Lincoln, which stands in Parliament square, opposite Westminster Abbey, was given by the American to the British people. _ . - On his initiative the Carnegie Endowment has assisted _ nobly in the work of reconstruction in Europe after the war. A library was built in Serbia for the Royal University of _ Belgrade. Relief was given to fugitives from Russia when funds were most needed. The famous library at Louvain was reconstructed and rehoused. A library was built at Rheims, and a town hall and school buildings for the commune of Fnrgniers. The European centre of the Carnegie Endowment in Paris has been made a hive of beneficient activity. It may be added that all the multifarious operations of the endowment have been conducted by Dr Butler in an entirely honorary capacity. .... If to-day America is playing an active part in the endeavour to organise international peace, and if the efforts of American Jingoes and Nationalists are met at every turn by a firm and intelligent opposition, it is in no small measure due to the energy and capacity of Dr Butler and the organisations of which he is the inspiring influence. Ho took no small part in the preliminary spade work which preceded the signature of the Briand-Kellogg Peace Pact, and he has since worked hard for the “ implementing ” of the pact bv the definition of “ an aggressor nation ” and by the prohibition of the giving of aict and comfort to such nations bv neutral nationals. Dr Butler is holder of many wellearned decorations and of doctors’ degrees conferred by more than a score of'universities throughout the world JANE ADDAMS “The foremost citizen of Chicago” is a term that has been applied to Miss Jane Addams, of Hull House. These are the main facts of her life, as summed up by the Boston ‘ Daily Globe’), which tells: “ How, through her father, who was an Illinois State Senator and a friend of Lincoln, Jane Addams, as a small girl, was brought into living familiarity with the democratic faith of the Emancipator; how sho set out to follow a career in medicine and suffered a nervous breakdown; how she went to Europe to recuperate, visited the London slums, and discovered for herself the squalor, the misery, the need of the lowly; how she found herself, studied the idea of settlement work at London’s famous Toynbee Hall, and re-

turned to AmWica determined on a life devoted to relief of suffering, poverty,' and ignorance; how, finally, Mull House, on Halsted street, Chicago,, became the birthplace of that idea into the realm of living realities. iC Ji> was Jane Addams s labours at Hull House, as the years fled, which carried her influence first into the hideous environs of one of the worst city slums in America, then into the educational affairs of Chicago (which made her chairman of the _ Board or Control of Educational Policy), then bit by bit into other cities, and finally, brought her to the intereste4 attention of the world beyond her city. “ The first conquest was summed up early in the present century, m the story of the visiting European who asked his Chicago host: ‘Who is America’s geratlest living iman?’ ‘Jans Addams,’ was the reply. It was not long thereafter that John Burns, British Labour leader and member or Parliament, conferred upon her the title of ‘ the only living saint America has yet produced.’ ” In a district surrounded by saloons,dives, and filth. Miss Addams started Hull House. She established day nurseries where working mothers might leave their children in safety, opened classes for children, fought corrupt politicians who preyed on the ignorance of the poor, welcomed all classes, races, and creeds at her door, and won her way into the hearts of all who lived in the district. ■ Classes were established for grown, ups in literature, languages, music,painting, wood-carving, metal work, dancing elocution, cooking, domestic economies, bookbinding, dressmaking, lace-making, and trades. A community theatre, a community savings hank, a lodging house, an employment agency, circulating library, a swimming pool, and clubs for adults followed. . . . And, concluded th© Daily Globe : “ No more stirring story of the power of individual effort is written in the pages of modern American history than this. The idea which sprouted in 1889 has now become the archetype of similar ideas in every city in the land.Jane Addams herself has grown with the idea. So has her influence. During the past forty years she has been in the front-Hno trenches for labour legislation, for playgrounds, day nurseries, clinics, and community centres.She was a leader in the struggle for. woman suffrage, and is still a captaingeneral in the fight for child labour laws. Her prestige in the peace movement bases not upon post-war convictions, hut upon convictions expressed and fought for ere that war began and as it was waging 1 . Her tolerance is free of all angry prejudices, all pettiness and fear. She is more interested in understanding than in frantic causes and political creeds. If America honours her to-day it honours itselt; For this ‘ineffably patient, disarm* ingly simple, implacably courageous woman has indeed grasped the great, ness of life.’ ” \