22 NOVEMBER 1946, Page 5

These are days when the committee called on to award

the Nobel Prize for Peace might well feel hard put to it, and the decision just taken is in some ways surprising. I have in the past known both Dr. J. R. Mott and Miss Emily Balch, one of whom is now 81 and

the other 79. Nothing but good can be said of either of them, but it would be difficult to regard them as in the normal succession to such past winners as M. Briand and Sir Austen Chamberlain. Dr. Mott is known in mission circles, Y.M.C.A. circles and (at an earlier date) student circles throughout the world ; I first met him, in fact, when I was an undergraduate. Miss Balch is the President of the Women's International League of Peace and Freedom. But in justice to Dr. Mott let me tell a story about him that goes rather far back. Either when or just after Theodore Roosevelt was President of the United States Cleveland Dodge, of New York, said to him : " Theodore, I want you to come to dinner to meet John R. Mott ; he says he doesn't know you. I always maintain that you and he and the Kaiser are the three greatest men in the world." Roosevelt came, enjoyed his new contact immensely and at the end took leave of his host by exclaiming with ingenuous emphasis, " By Jove, Cleveland, you were right."