Misunderstanding arising from ignorance breeds fear, and fear remains the greatest enemy of peace.
Of all our dreams today there is none more important – or so hard to realise – than that of peace in the world. May we never lose our faith in it or our resolve to do everything that can be done to convert it one day into reality.
As a soldier, I survived World War I when most of my comrades did not.
The grim fact is that we prepare for war like precocious giants, and for peace like retarded pygmies.
Today continuing poverty and distress are a deeper and more important cause of international tensions, of the conditions that can produce war, than previously.
It has too often been too easy for rulers and governments to incite man to war.
Until the last great war, a general expectation of material improvement was an idea peculiar to Western man. Now war and its aftermath have made economic and social progress a political imperative in every quarter of the globe.
True there has been more talk of peace since 1945 than, I should think, at any other time in history. At least we hear more and read more about it because man’s words, for good or ill, can now so easily reach the millions.
Today the predatory state, or the predatory group of states, with power of total destruction, is no more to be tolerated than the predatory individual.
I am grateful for the opportunities I have been given to participate in that work as a representative of my country, Canada, whose people have, I think, shown their devotion to peace.
The choice, however, is as clear now for nations as it was once for the individual: peace or extinction.
But while we all pray for peace, we do not always, as free citizens, support the policies that make for peace or reject those which do not. We want our own kind of peace, brought about in our own way.
I cannot think of anything more difficult than to say something which would be worthy of this impressive and, for me, memorable occasion, and of the ideals and purposes which inspired the Nobel Peace Award.