Nobel Peace Prize

In His Nobel Peace Prize Acceptance Speech, Dr. Schweitzer Said: Now that we know how terrible an evil war is in our time, we should neglect nothing that may prevent its recurrence. Above all, this decision must be based on ethical values; during the last two wars we were guilty of atrocious acts of inhumanity. In any future war, we shall do yet more terrible things. This must not be. Man has become a superman. He is a superman not only because he has at his command innate physical forces, but because, thanks to science and to technical advancement, he now controls the latent forces of nature and can bring them into play. But this superman suffers from a fatal imperfection of mind. He has not raised himself to that superhuman level of reason which should correspond to the possession of superhuman strength. Yet this is what he needs, if he is to put his gigantic strength to ends which are reasonable and useful, rather than destructive and murderous. For this reason the advance of science has become fatal to him, rather than advantageous. But the essential fact which must now strike home to us is that inhumanity and the superman age are indissolubly linked; the one progresses in step with the other. We tolerate mass-killing in wartime, just as we tolerate the destruction by atomic bombing of whole towns and their populations. We tolerate the use of the flame-thrower which turns living human beings into flaming torches. We learn of these things in the news, and we judge them according to whether they signify a success for the group of nations to whom we belong, or for our enemies. When we admit to ourselves that they were the direct results of an act of inhumanity, our admission is qualified by the reflection that "war is war" and there is nothing to be done about it. In so resigning ourselves, without any further resistance, we ourselves become guilty of inhumanity. The important thing is that we should, one and all, acknowledge that we have been guilty of this inhumanity. The horror of that avowal must needs arouse every one of us from our apathy and compel us to hope and to work with all our strength for the coming of an age in which war will no longer exist.

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