Nobel "Fraternizers"

The Swedish inventor of dynamite, Alfred Bernhard Nobel, did not, strictly speaking, found and endow a "Peace Prize." Phrasemakers coined that term. It has come to suggest a shining award, fit only for such world-great champions as Theodore Roosevelt, who won it in 1906, or Woodrow Wilson, to whom it fell in 1918. Yet the words of M. Nobel are clear. What he founded and endowed was no simple "Peace Prize" but an award "for fraternization among nations and the abolition or reduction of standing armies and the calling and propagating of peace congresses."

Thus it happened that the Nobel "Peace Prize" for 1927 was awarded, last week, to two elderly and little-known "fraternizers among nations": Professor Doktor Ludwig Quidde of the University of Munich, 69; and Professor Ferdinand Buisson, 86, retired, onetime preceptor at the Sorbonne. When the Norwegian Storting (Parliament), which is charged with making the award, announced its decision, last week, a teapot-tempest of press indignation seethed.

"Who is Herr Quidde?" roared the Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung, and answered: "More than 30 years ago he gained cheap fame with the pamplet Caligula." Indeed, few Germans could recall, last week, the full title of that pamphlet: "Caligula: A Study of Caesarean Insanity." When published, it temporarily wrecked the good Professor's academic career--for in it he dared to suggest that Wilhelm II might fall a prey to that madness born of power which destroyed the reason of the Roman Emperor Caligula (12-41). Because Professor Quidde has continued all his life to militate against militarism and to propagate German peace societies, he loomed, last week, as a distinguished "fraternizer" in the Nobel sense.

Better known, of course, is M. Buisson, now Honorary President of the League of the Rights of Man. Since he attended the first so-called "Congress for Peace and Liberty" in 1867, he has labored with and assisted almost every famed pacifist from Victor Hugo to Aristide Briand. Hundreds of peace tracts flowed incessantly off his pen during a literary activity of 60 years. Finally, he has raised his voice for peace in the French Parliament-- as Herr Quidde has done in the German.

Together they attended the World Peace Conference at Berlin, in 1924; and last week they journeyed happily to Oslo, Norwegian capital, and thence to Stockholm, Swedish capital.

The Nobel diplomas were handed to M. Buisson and Herr Quidde by tall, rugged King Gustav V of Sweden. Diplomas covering literature, medicine and physics were then handed by His Majesty to winners announced some weeks ago (TIME, Nov. 7).

Donna Grazia Deledda, Italian authoress of Sardinian tales, received the 1927 literature award. Medical diplomas for 1926 and 1927 went respectively to Dr. Johannes Fibiger, Danish cancer expert; and to Dr. Julius Wagner von Jauregg, Viennese professor of medicine. Finally the 1927 physics award was shared by two scholarly investigators of electrophysics: Professors Arthur Holly Compton (U.S.) and Charles T. R. Wilson (Britain).*

* The medicine and science awards were reported in TIME Nov. 7 & Nov. 21.