Men of Peace

Not since 1927 have the Norwegian guardians of the trust fund of Alfred Bernhard Nobel, Swedish dynamite tycoon, found anyone worthy of the greatest of their beneficences, the so-called Nobel Peace Prize. They made up lost time last "week by awarding the Peace Prize twice in succession: for 1929 to Frank Billings Kellogg, onetime janitor, lawyer, onetime U. S. Secretary of State; for 1930 to the Most Rev. Dr. Nathan Lars Olof Jonathan Soderblom, Archbishop of Upsala, primate of the Lutheran Church in Sweden, father of twelve. Each of these distinguished gentlemen will receive $46,430. U. S. newspapers cheered, for Mr. Kellogg is the third U. S. citizen to be raised to the Nobelity this year, together with Novelist Sinclair ("Red") Lewis, Bacteriologist Karl Landsteiner.

Reason for the Kellogg award was his sponsoring, as U. S. Secretary of State, the Briand-Kellogg Peace Pact, the three-article treaty signed and ratified by 15 war "as an Governments which instrument of promised to national renounce policy'' (TIME, Sept. 29 et ante).

Reporters found Mr. Kellogg at The Hague, where he is a judge of the Permanent Court of International Justice, about to attend a Thanksgiving dinner of the American Netherlands Society.

"Well," said Mr. Kellogg, "the news comes as a complete surprise to me,* but naturally I am very pleased."

Less obvious to the average U. S. citizen is the award of Dr. Soderblom. Newsgatherers recalled that their last story about him was when he dropped a key out of a rowboat after the funeral of the last of Sweden's famed Brahe family (TIME, June 30). There was no surprise, however, among theologians. Churchmen know Archbishop Soderblom as a scholar, linguist--he speaks ten languages, has written books in German, French, English, Swedish, Dutch--and an incessant worker for Church Unity and World Peace. In 1925 in an attempt to unite at least the Protestant sects of Christianity, he helped organize the Christian Conference on Life & Work at Stockholm. In 1927 he pleaded again for Christian unity at the World Conference on Faith & Order at Lausanne. Said he then:

"We do not demand conformity in the presentation of doctrine. . . . We can highly value a certain form of ministry, but we are not bound to consider it as necessary in principle to church unity."

Archbishop Soderblom's second most important job is that of pro-Chancellor of the University of Upsala,* oldest of Sweden's universities, alma mater of Sweden's greatest, scene of the synod which marked the victory of Protestantism in Sweden.

*Nobel Prizeman Lewis, too, expressed surprise at first. But last week he confessed.

*Spelled with two P's by purists.

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