Nobel Peace Prize
Thinking about the Peace Prize reminded me of Albert Schweitzer who was awarded the Prize back in 1954. Schweitzer was a childhood hero of mine -- led a very interesting life.
Wikipedia has an
excellent biography.
Theologian, Philosopher, Organist (and builder of Pipe Organs) Schweitzer entered Medical School at the age of 40 and then spent the rest of his life in Africa eventually founding a hospital in Lambaréné in what is now Gabon.
The speech he gave when
receiving the Prize is timely and worth reading today:
The Problem of Peace
For the subject of my lecture, a redoubtable honor imposed by the award of the Nobel Peace Prize, I have chosen the problem of peace as it is today. In so doing, I believe that I have acted in the spirit of the founder of this prize who devoted himself to the study of the problem as it existed in his own day and age, and who expected his Foundation to encourage consideration of ways to serve the cause of peace.
I shall begin with an account of the situation at the end of the two wars through which we have recently passed.
The statesmen who were responsible for shaping the world of today through the negotiations which followed each of these two wars found the cards stacked against them. Their aim was not so much to create situations which might give rise to widespread and prosperous development as it was to establish the results of victory on a permanent basis. Even if their judgment had been unerring, they could not have used it as a guide. They were obliged to regard themselves as the executors of the will of the conquering peoples. They could not aspire to establishing relations between peoples on a just and proper basis; all their efforts were taken up by the necessity of preventing the most unreasonable of the demands made by the victors from becoming reality; they had, moreover, to convince the conquering nations to compromise with each other whenever their respective views and interests conflicted.
The true source of what is untenable in our present situation - and the victors are beginning to suffer from it as well as the vanquished - lies in the fact that not enough thought was given to the realities of historical fact and, consequently, to what is just and beneficial.
Wow! This is only a fraction of his speech -- plan on spending a good 30 minutes reading and re-reading it, savoring choice paragraphs. Even though he penned these words fifty years ago, they are as clear and direct and to the point as if he had written them today...
Posted by DaveH at December 3, 2005 12:51 PM