Run-Yanking

INTERNATIONAL

Bun-Yanking

"There is a special reason," said Professor Halvdan Koht at the Nobel Institute in Oslo last week, "why peace prizes so often have gone to America. ... It is true that the United States sometimes has pursued an imperialistic policy, a natural consequence of industrial capitalism, but they have also fostered the most vigorous idealism in the world. The American people have an instinctive faith in the perfectibility of man. An ideal is to an American not a distant mirage but a practical reality which it is one's duty to put into life."

King Haakon VII, Crown Prince Olaf, members of the Cabinet and Oslo's diplomatic corps politely clapped their white kid gloves. The occasion was the sist annual meeting of the Nobel committee, the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize for 1931 to two U. S. citizens: President Nicholas Murray Butler of Columbia University and Social Worker Jane Addams of Chicago's Hull House. The award this year is $31,369; each will receive half.

Her fellow countrymen, well aware of Miss Addams' notable welfare work in Chicago (President Gerard Swope of General Electric, ex-Premier William Lyon Mackenzie King of Canada have worked at Hull House) are not accustomed to thinking of her as internationally-minded. But she has long been an enthusiast for the World Court and League of Nations. She refused to take any part in War work, was a pilgrim on Henry Ford's "Peace Ship." When she won the Pictorial Review's $5,000 award this year, her interest in world peace was mentioned, as well as Hull House. She had been nominated for the Nobel Prize year after year by various women's organizations. But last week she was in no condition to enjoy her prize. Gravely ill in Johns Hopkins Hospital, she said that her prize money would be given to the Women's International League for Peace, of which she, aged 71, is honorary president. Two days after the prizes were awarded in Oslo, she was operated on for an ovarian cyst.

Morningside Heights greeted the Butler award with loud hosannas. This has been a Butler year at Columbia: it marks the 69th anniversary of the learned doctor's birth, the 30th anniversary of his presidency of the University. The Nobel Prize could have come at no better time. To Europeans the reward seemed well merited. Dr. Butler is reputedly the man who persuaded Andrew Carnegie to establish the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. No U. S. citizen is better known in European chancelleries, none has been so often honored.

It was the late great Theodore Roosevelt who first called Nicholas Murray Butler "Nicholas Miraculous." In his senior year at Columbia (1882) classmates had a perter epithet: he was known as "the great bun-yanker" (winner of scholastic honors). Bun-Yanker Butler won innumerable prizes, was class orator and Greek salutatorian, was indefatigable in his searching out of celebrities. He won his Ph. D. two years later and at the same time joined the Columbia faculty as a fellow in philosophy. Dr. Butler is pos-sibly the ablest, certainly the most colorful university president in the U. S., the only national college figure since Harvard's Charles William Eliot. To Dr. Butler is due most credit for the fact that Columbia is now the largest University in the world, with a registration of 31,978 men & women.

He has remained a bun-yanker. For many years he fought a three-cornered contest with Lawyer Samuel Untermyer and the late Dr. William Eleazar Bart father of Publicist Bruce Barton, over who should have the longest biography Who's Who (TIME, Sept. 8, 1930,). Had he added his column and a quarter in British Who's Who Dr. Butler wo have won hands down. Dr. Barton Mr. Untermyer were not even listed th Bun-Yanker Butler knows every important European statesman, has played little part in European politics. Few U. S. citizens remember that in 1911 when British Government was preparing emasculate the House of Lords, Dr. Bu was smuggled into Cabinet meetings Downing Street, where he delivered erudite lectures on the British Constitution to Messrs. Asquith, Lloyd Georg, Austen Chamberlain, Augustine Bir et al. and gave his unofficial approval the Parliament Act as presented to House of Commons. Curiously, Great Britain is almost the only European a try that has not honored him official Bun-Yanker Butler is a Grand Office the Legion of Honor; Knight of the Eagle, with star (Prussia); Grand Commander of the Royal Order of the deemer, 1st class (Greece"); Grand Coi of the Order of Leopold (Belgium) ; Commander of the Order of St. Maurice & St. Lazarus (Italy), etc. etc., but British banquets his shirtfront rem blank.

In the U. S. he was presented as a presidential possibility in the Republican convention of 1920, but despite his ( paign manager's slogan, "Pick Nick for a Pic-Nic in November," the New York delegation deserted him for Gei Leonard Wood even before the switch to Harding.

He remains a liberal Republican, Foreign observers know him as a crony of and U. S. spokesman for Brer Briand his policies. One fact especially endears Dr. Butler to Europe. He is a ceaseless champion of every attempt to repeal the 18th Amendment; only a lifetime of Republican training prevented him in 1928 from voting for Alfred Emanuel Smith. In penance he penned a ringing tribute for the diploma which made Candidate Smith a Doctor of Laws.

Dr. Butler celebrated his award week with a typical Butlerian address broadcast over N. B. C.'s national hoi Excerpts:

"It is with real emotion that I acknowledge . . . that I record . . . profound appreciation. . . .

"The great hope is of a world that has learned the supreme lesson . . . that might does not make right and that war between nations is as much out of date as the torture chamber or the scalping knife.

"Substitute for departments or ministries of war, navy and aviation a singel department or ministry of nationa fense. There is no longer room for the word 'war' in the permanent organization of any government signatory to the Pact of Paris, or giving its adherence thereto."

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