Theodore Roosevelt talking to the press.
President Theodore Roosevelt clenches his teeth as he makes a point during an interview with unidentified journalists. PhotoQuest / Getty Images
On the tenth anniversary of Alfred Nobel’s death, Prime Minister Gunnar Knudsen of Norway and the four other members of the Nobel committee gathered in Oslo to announce the recipient of the 1906 Nobel Peace Prize.
For his “happy role in bringing to an end the bloody war recently waged between two of the world’s great powers, Japan and Russia,” U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt became the first American to win any Nobel Prize.
The 26th president was also the first statesman to win a Peace Prize, a historic occurrence that ruffled feathers. Since the prize’s establishment in 1901, its winners had been leaders of the Red Cross, founders of peace groups and the author of Lay Down Your Arms, an anti-war novel.
Roosevelt, by contrast, was a lieutenant colonel in the Spanish-American War and advocated American intervention in Latin America. Although he may have believed in peace, he was hardly a pacifist.
Theodore Roosevelt in Norway
Theodore Roosevelt in 1910 while on tour in Norway Public domain via the Theodore Roosevelt Birthplace National Historic Site
These controversies aside, the Nobel decision rested instead on Roosevelt’s efforts to bring about the end of the Russo-Japanese War in 1905.
The war began just a year earlier, when an ascendent Japan clashed with rival Russian ambitions and expansionism in East Asia. Without first declaring war, Japanese warships attacked a Russian squadron at Port Arthur in modern-day northern China. The move stunned Russia, which declared war eight days later.
Russia suffered numerous defeats throughout the war, but fought on in hopes of avoiding humiliation. Finally, after the Japanese crushed them at the Battle of Tsushima, the Russians agreed to peace negotiations arbitrated by the United States.
The resulting Treaty of Portsmouth, signed in the New Hampshire town on September 5, 1905, ceded large hunks of Manchuria, Korea and the island of Sakhalin to Japan.
The Japanese were pleased; the Russians were not. But there was peace, and Roosevelt was inundated with letters of congratulations at his Long Island home in Sagamore Hill “until the official staff of clerks were overwhelmed with the task of answering them,” the Glenville Progress reported.
Speculation about Roosevelt winning the Nobel Prize immediately flared, and the next December, he did.
Envoys to the 1905 Portsmouth Peace Conference
A postcard featuring portraits of envoys to the 1905 Portsmouth Peace Conference Public domain via Wikimedia Commons
In the speech announcing the prize, Knudsen argued that peace was once “regarded as a utopian idea … out of touch with the realities of life.” That Roosevelt, a statesman and military man, “espoused the cause” of peace in Portsmouth was a major stride forward for the global peace movement, Knudsen said.
Busy with his presidential duties, Roosevelt had an American diplomat accept the award in his stead, announcing the president’s intention to use the prize money to establish a “permanent industrial peace committee” to resolve disputes between capitalists and workers.
Only after Roosevelt left office could he travel to Norway to accept his award in person. He delivered his Nobel lecture at the National Theater in Oslo to a crowd of over 2,000 on May 5, 1910, speaking both abstractly and practically about peace and how to truly attain it.
“Peace is generally good in itself, but it is never the highest good unless it comes as the handmaid of righteousness,” Roosevelt said. “It becomes a very evil thing if it serves merely as a mask for cowardice and sloth, or as an instrument to further the ends of despotism or anarchy.”
He went on to tout the value of international law, suggesting that “great powers honestly bent on peace” should form “some kind of international police action” or “a League of Peace.”
This was the essence of Roosevelt’s hard-nosed, pragmatic belief in peace through action, not merely through words and ideas.
“Our words must be judged by our deeds,” Roosevelt declared, “and in striving for a lofty ideal we must use practical methods; and if we cannot attain all at one leap, we must advance towards it step by step, reasonably content so long as we do actually make some progress in the right direction.”
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Filed Under: American History, Japan, Nobel Prizes, On This Day in History, Russia , Theodore Roosevelt, Warfare