A SPECTATOR'S NOTEBOOK
NOTHING but warm satisfaction can be felt anywhere at the award of the Nobel Peace Prize to Lord Cecil. It is astonishing that he was not given it years ago. As it is, the decision of the committee comes at a moment when it must be especially welcome, for it brings fit recog- nition to one of the chief authors of the League of Nations at a time when the League is passing through its darkest period, and also at a time when Lord Cecil is visiting the United States as an ambassador of peace to the Churches. America gave him its own recognition years ago in the first award of the Woodrow Wilson Founda- tion (part of which he used to provide various ameni- ties for the staff of the League of Nations at Geneva), but the new international recognition will secure him a larger and a readier hearing during his present mission. The committee does not, I believe, give reasons for its award, but it may well have had in mind Lord Cecil's part in the launching of the International Peace Campaign. It is clearer every day that there can be no settled peace till all nations, not merely fifty or sixty or seventy per cent. of the nations, are imbued with the true spirit of peace. Whether the International Peace Campaign can achieve that in present circumstances may well be doubted. But it is obviously the right attempt to make.
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