Presentation Speech by Jørgen Gunnarsson Løvland, Chairman of the Nobel Committee, on December 10, 1907*

Ernesto Teodoro Moneta was born in Milan in 1833. At the age of fifteen he took part in the war of liberation against the Austrians, and in 1859 he fought at Garibaldi’s side in both North and South Italy. In 1866 Moneta was an officer in the war with Austria, but after that campaign he retired from the army and has since devoted himself to journalism. In his thirties he became editor-in-chief of the Milan newspaper Il Secolo, one of the most important newspapers in Italy, and since 1898 he has published the periodical La Vita internazionale.

Since 1870 Moneta has belonged to the international peace movement and is its most important Italian representative. He has been a member of the Commission of the International Peace Bureau since 1895. With his prominent position in the Italian press, he has enjoyed excellent opportunities to promote his views. Special emphasis must be placed on his work in the press and in peace meetings, both public and private, for an understanding between France and Italy – work which dates back as far as the beginning of the modern-day enmity between these two countries.

In 1887 Moneta founded the Lombard Peace Union, of which he is now president. He has organized several peace meetings in Italy and in 1906 presided over the fifteenth International Peace Congress in Milan.

* On December 10, 1907, at the Norwegian Nobel Institute, Mr. Løvland, also at this time Norway’s foreign minister, welcomed the audience and paid tribute to the memory of King Oscar II of Sweden (the last king to reign over the union of Sweden and Norway before its dissolution in 1905) who had died two days before. After a speech on «The Second Peace Conference» by Committee member Francis Hagerup, Mr. Løvland announced the joint winners of the Peace Prize for 1907, Mr. Moneta and Mr. Renault. He followed his announcement with a biographical sketch of each. That of Mr. Moneta is given here as the presentation speech. The translation is based on the Norwegian report in the Oslo Aftenposten of December 10, 1907.

Presentation by Jørgen Gunnarsson Løvland, Chairman of the Nobel Committee, on December 10, 1907*

Louis Renault was born in 1843 at Autun (Saône-et-Loire) and since the age of twenty-five has been professor of international law, first at Dijon and then in 1873 in Paris, where he has lectured both at the Faculty of Law at the University and at the Free School of Exact Sciences, which trains aspiring diplomats and members of the consular service. Since 1890 Renault has also been legal counselor to the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Although Renault has not been a prolific writer, he is the author of a number of articles on international law, some published as monographs, some in periodicals; and in collaboration with a colleague he has produced a treatise on commercial law which is very highly regarded. His principal activities have been those of university lecturer – he may be said to have been the guiding genius in the teaching of international law in France – of counselor to the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and finally of France’s representative at a large number of international meetings, among them: the conferences in Bern and Paris on the protection of literary and artistic property¹; the important series of conferences at The Hague in 1893, 1894, 1900, and 1904 on agreements about international civil legal conditions; the conference in Geneva in 1906 for the revision of the 1864 Geneva Convention²; and last, but not least, the two international Peace Conferences at The Hague in 1899 and 1907.

At all these conferences Louis Renault has played an outstanding part. As a rule he has been the rapporteur of the meeting and as such has drafted reports and recommendations; consequently, he has had a decisive influence upon the agreements and the form they took. At the Hague Peace Conference in 1899, Renault was reporter for the commission working on the problem of applying the provisions of the Geneva Convention to naval warfare, and for the drafting committee which drew up the Final Act of the Conference.

Renault’s participation in the Peace Conference at The Hague³ was even more important. He was spokesman on the following problems:

(1) Opening of hostilities
(2) Application of the Geneva Convention to naval warfare
(3) Obligations and rights of neutral countries in the case of naval warfare
(4) The International Prize Court of Appeal.

The last two, in particular, are of far-reaching importance, as well as of extremely delicate nature. Renault was also chairman and spokesman of the drafting committee of the Conference and, as such, had enormous influence upon the final wording of the Conventions; by the outstanding part he played in the debates, probably greater than that of any other member, he also made his mark on the work of the Conference as a whole.

The president of the Conference, Mr. Nelidov⁴, described Renault as its «principal worker» and on one occasion said that his dictionary had run out of words of praise with which to describe Renault’s share in the work of the Conference.

Louis Renault is a member of the Institute of International Law and of the Institut de France.

* Mr. Løvland delivered this speech on December 10, 1907, at the Norwegian Nobel Institute, following his announcement of the award of the Peace Prize for 1907 to Mr. Moneta and Mr. Renault. This translation is based on the Norwegian report in the Oslo Aftenposten of December 10, 1907. (For a note on other details of the occasion, see presentation speech of Mr. Moneta.)

1. Bern: 1886; Paris: 1896

2. The first Geneva Convention for the Amelioration of the Condition of Soldiers wounded in Armed Forces in the Field (signed on August 22, 1864) was revised at this 1906 conference which was called by the Swiss in response to a request made at the time of the 1899 Hague Peace Conference.

3. In 1907

4. Aleksandr Nelidov (1838-1910), Russian diplomat, president of the 1907 Hague Peace Conference.