This year, for the first time, the Nobel prizes were distributed. The date selected was the tenth of December, the anniversary of the testator’s death. The peace prize was divided and assigned in equal shares to Frédéric Passy and Henri Dunant. Highly as I regarded and still regard Dunant, persuaded as I was and am of his friendly attitude toward peace, nevertheless his services and his fame rested on a quite different field from that which Nobel had in mind. The granting of the prize to Dunant was once more a concession to that spirit which managed to force its way even into the Hague Conference, and which supports the dogma that the endeavors against war should be discreetly limited to its alleviation.
That Frédéric Passy, the oldest, the most deserving, and the most highly regarded of all pacifists, received the prize was a great satisfaction to all of us—only the whole amount should have gone to him.
I received the following letter from Dunant:
Heiden, December 10, 1901
My dear Madam:
I am impelled to offer you my homage on this day, as I have just been informed by an official telegram from Christiania that the Nobel peace prize has been granted to me in conjunction with my honored colleague of many years’ standing, Frédéric Passy.
This prize, gracious lady, is your work; for through your instrumentality Herr Nobel became devoted to the peace movement, and at your suggestion he became its promoter.
For more than fifty years I have been a pronounced adherent of the cause of international peace, and a fighter under the white banner. The work of international brotherhood has been my aim ever since my earliest youth. I say this and repeat it to-day more emphatically than ever in my character as founder of the universal institution of the Red Cross and as promoter of the Geneva Convention of August 22, 1864.
When, in the year 1861, I wrote my Souvenir de Solferino, my principal aim—be assured of this—was general pacification; I desired as far as I could to awaken horror of war in the readers of my book.
This has been recognized, and I will merely adduce one example. The famous Professor Marc Girardin, of the French Academy, said in an article devoted to my book, “I could wish that this book should be widely read, especially by those who love and glorify war.”