The Nobel Committee owes its existence to the will of the late Alfred B. Nobel (1833-1896), the inventor of dynamite, who left a considerable fortune for the encouragement of men who work for the benefit of humanity. The interest of this money was to be divided into five equal parts, to be distributed every year as rewards to the persons who had deserved best of mankind in five departments of human activity. The clauses of the will governing the distribution of these prizes are as follows: —
“The entire sum shall be divided into five equal parts, one to go to the man who shall have made the most important discovery or invention in the domain of physical science; another to the man who shall have made the most important discovery or introduced the greatest improvement in chemistry; the third to the author of the most important discovery in the domain of physiology or medicine; the fourth to the man who shall have produced the most remarkable work of an idealistic nature; and, finally, the fifth to the man who shall have done the most or best work for the fraternity of nations, the suppression or reduction of standing armies, and the formation and propagation of peace congresses. The prizes shall be awarded as follows: For physical science and chemistry, by the Swedish Academy of Sciences; for physiological or medical work, by the Caroline Institutional Stockholm; for literature, by the Stockholm Academy, and for peace work, by a committee of five members elected by the Norwegian Storthing. It is my express desire that, in awarding the prizes, no account shall be taken of nationality, in order that the prize may fall to the lot of the most deserving, whether he be Scandinavian or not.”
Peace v. War. — Peace is the ultimate object of all statecraft — peace in the development of the domestic activities of the nation administered, and peace in the relations of states with one another. For the purpose of ensuring peace an expensive diplomacy is maintained by all states, and to perpetuate it treaties are entered into by states with one another. Even war has no other avowed purpose than that of placing specific international relations on a definite footing. Ultimate peace is uniformly proclaimed by every dictator at home, by every conqueror abroad, as the goal to which he is directing his efforts. And yet dissentient voices are sometimes heard defending war as if it were an end in itself. Without going back to the well-known reply of Count Moltke to Professor Bluntschli respecting the Manual of the Laws of War drawn up by the Institute of International Law in 1880,[1] we need only quote that highly up-to-date philosopher, Nietzsche: “It is mere illusion and pretty sentiment,” he observes, “to expect much (even anything at all) from mankind if it forgets how to make war. As yet no means are known which call so much into action as a great war, that rough energy born of the camp, that deep impersonality born of hatred, that conscience born of murder and cold-bloodedness, that fervour born of effort in the annihilation of the enemy, that proud indifference to loss, to one's own existence, to that of one's fellows, to that earthquake-like soul-shaking which a people needs when it is losing its vitality.”[2]
It is pleasant to contrast this neurotic joy of one onlooker with the matter-of-fact reflexions of another, the late W. E. H. Lecky. “War” he says “is not, and never can be a mere passionless discharge of a painful duty. It is in its essence, and it is a main condition of its success, to kindle into fierce exercise among great masses of men the destructive and combative passions passions as fierce and as malevolent as that with which the hound hunts the fox to its death or the tiger springs upon its prey. Destruction is one of its chief ends. Deception is one of its chief means, and one of the great arts of skilful generalship is to deceive in order to destroy. Whatever other elements may mingle with and dignify war, this at least is never absent; and however reluctantly men may enter into war, however conscientiously they may endeavour to avoid it, they must know that when the scene of carnage has once opened, these things must be not only accepted and condoned, but stimulated, encouraged and applauded. It would be difficult to conceive a disposition more remote from the morals of ordinary life, not to speak of Christian ideals, than that with which the soldiers most animated with the fire and passion that lead to victory rush forward to bayonet the foe. . . . It is allowable to deceive an enemy by fabricated despatches purporting to come from his own side; by tampering with telegraph messages; by spreading false intelligence in newspapers; by sending pretended spies and deserters to give him untrue reports of the numbers or movements of the troops; by employing false signals to lure him into an ambuscade. On the use of the flag and uniform of an enemy for purposes of deception there has been some controversy, but it is supported by high military authority. . . . Hardly any one will be so confident of the virtue of his rulers as to believe that every war which his country wages in very part of its dominions with uncivilized as well as civilized populations, is just and necessary, and it is certainly prima facie not in accordance with an ideal morality that men should find themselves absolutely for life or for a term of years to kill without question, at the command of their superiors, those who have personally done them no wrong.”[3]
Surely with all the existing activity in the removal of causes of war, in the reduction to precise expression of the rules of law governing the relations of states with one another, in the creation of international judicatures for the application of these rules, in the concluding of treaties specifically framed to facilitate the pacific settlement of difficulties diplomacy may have failed to adjust, in the promotion of democratic civilian armies with everything to lose by war, and all the other agencies which have seen described above, the hope seems warranted that, in no distant future, life among nations will become still more closely assimilated to life among citizens of the same nation, with legislation, administration, reform all tending to the one real object of law, order and peace among men. (T. Ba.)
PEACE, BREACH OF THE. Theoretically all criminal offences cognizable by English law involve a breach of the king's peace, and all indictments whether for offences against the common law or by statute conclude “against the peace of our lord the king, his crown and dignity.” Historically this phrase, now legally superfluous, represents the last trace of the process by which the royal courts assume jurisdiction over all offences, and gradually extruded the jurisdiction of the sheriff and of lords of manors and franchises, making crime a matter of national concern as distinguished from civil wrongs or infractions of the rights of local magnates, or of the rights of the tribal chiefs of the Teutonic conquerors of Britain. The peace of the king was sworn on his accession or full recognition, and the jurisdiction of his courts to punish all violations of that peace was gradually asserted. The completion of this process is marked by the institution of the office of justice of the peace.
In modern times the expression “breach of the peace” is usually limited to offences involving actual tumult, disturbances or disorder. As regards such offences, although they do not fall into the class of grave crimes described as felonies, officers of police and even private persons have larger powers and duties, as to immediate arrest without waiting for judicial warrant, than they possess as to other minor offences (see Arrest). Justices of the peace have under early statutes and the commission of the peace power to take sureties of the peace from persons who are threatening to commit a breach of the peace, and it is within the power of any court on conviction of any misdemeanour and of many felonies to require the offender to enter into a recognizance (q.v.) to keep the peace.
PEACE CONFERENCES, the official title of the two international conferences held at the Hague in 1899 and 1907. Both were organized at the instance of the emperor Nicholas II. of Russia. The chief object of the first conference, as set out in the note of Count Mouraviev, the Russian minister of foreign affairs (Jan. 11, 1899), was to arrive at an “understanding not to increase for a fixed period the present effectives of the armed military and naval forces, and at the same time not to increase the budgets pertaining thereto; and a preliminary examination of the means by which even a reduction might be effected in future in the forces and budgets above
