The 1931 Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to Jane Addams, of the United States, for her social reform work and leading the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom and to Nicholas Murray Butler, also of the United States, for his promotion of the Briand-Kellogg pact and for his work as the leader of the more establishment-oriented part of the American peace movement. Addams opposition to war arose from her work as a pioneering social worker. She wrote in her introduction to her book Bread and Peace in a Time of War (1922), “All of us, from long experience among the immigrants from many nations, were convinced that a friendly, cooperative relationship was constantly becoming more possible among all peoples. We believed that war, seeing its end through coercion, not only interrupted but fatally reversed this process of cooperating good will which, if it had a chance, would eventually include the human family itself.”
The Nobel Peace Prize is one of the five Nobel Prizes created by the Swedish industrialist, inventor, and armaments manufacturer Alfred Nobel. Since 1901 it has been awarded annually (with some exceptions) to those who have “done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses” Over the next few months we’ll be introducing you to the past Nobel laureates, leading up to the award of the 2016 prize in October.
