“Moral force can be a bulwark against aggression and that it is possible to make aggressive forces yield without resorting to power,” said Gunnar Jahn, chairman of the Nobel Committee, at the December 1957 ceremony honoring Lester Pearson, who is still the only Canadian to win the Nobel Peace Prize.
Pearson, then Canada’s secretary of state for external affairs, was being honored the central role he played in defusing the Suez Crisis in 1956 by orchestrating the creation of the UN’s first peacekeeping force in November 1956. That action force was honored by today’s #stampoftheday, 3- and 8-cent stamps issued by the United Nations on April 8, 1957, only a few months after the force was authorized and deployed.
When it was his turn to accept what is arguably one of the world’s highest honors, Pearson (who also was Prime Minister of Canada from 1963 to 1967), delivered a thoughtful, but largely forgotten speech.
Pearson began in a light-hearted way. “May I thank you, Mr. Chairman, for your very kind and generous words. I am sorry that I am not sufficiently educated to have understood them in Norwegian but I was able to detect two words, ‘Lester Pearson’. They seemed to me to recur all too frequently but I suppose that in the circumstance it was hard to avoid that.”
He continued by paying tribute to Alfred Nobel, but then noted, “at this moment I am particularly conscious of the wisdom of one of his observations that ‘long speeches will not ensure peace’.”
But he wasn’t making light of the issues and challenges the world faced in 1957, many of which are familiar today. Nor did he ignore the crisis from the previous year that began on July 26, 1956, when then Egyptian President, Gamal Abdul Nasser nationalized and seized the Suez Canal, which was privately owned by the Anglo-French Suez Canal Corporation. Concerned this could shut them off from the world, on October 29, the Israeli army invaded the Sinai Peninsula. The following day, French and British aircraft bombed Egyptian air bases and on November 5, British and French troops landed at the Egyptian town of Port Said. Many nations, including the United States, condemned these actions.
After a series of intense and difficult negotiations, Pearson got the UN to approve the creation of multinational UN Emergency Force (UNEF). The force, which was comprised of about 6,000 soldiers from 11 countries, ultimately replaced the British, French and Israeli forces It remained in place until 1967 when Nasser ordered UN forces out of the Sinai, a move that precipitated the Six-Day War.
In his remarks, Pearson emphasized both the importance and the limits of what the force had accomplished. He acknowledged that the idea that a truly effective international police force “unrealizable to the point of absurdity.” But, he continued, “we did…take at least a step in the direction of putting international force behind an international decision a year ago in the Suez crisis.” And, he added, “under the peaceful blue emblem of the United Nations, it brought, and has maintained, at least relative quiet on an explosive border.”
However, he noted, “I do not exaggerate the significance of what has been done. There is no peace in the area. There is no unanimity…about the functions and future of this force. It would be futile in a quarrel between, or in opposition to, big powers. But it may have prevented a brush fire becoming an all-consuming blaze at the Suez last year, and it could do so again in similar circumstances in the future.
We made at least a beginning then. If, on that foundation, we do not build something more permanent and stronger, we will once again have ignored realities, rejected opportunities, and betrayed our trust. Will we never learn?”
This question was quite personal, he said, because “all of my adult life has been spent…in an atmosphere of international conflict, of fear and insecurity. As a soldier, I survived World War I when most of my comrades did not. As a civilian during the Second War, I was exposed to danger in circumstances which removed any distinction between the man in and the man out of uniform. And I have lived since – as you have – in a period of cold war, during which we have ensured by our achievements in the science and technology of destruction that a third act in this tragedy of war will result in the peace of extinction.
I have, therefore, had compelling reason, and some opportunity, to think about peace, to ponder over our failures since 1914 to establish it, and to shudder at the possible consequences if we continue to fail.”
“Our problem, then, so easy to state, so hard to solve, is how to bring about a creative peace and a security which will have a strong foundation,” he noted, adding, that unfortunately, “I cannot, I fear, provide you, in the words of Alfred Nobel, with ‘some lofty thoughts to lift us to the spheres’.”
Rather, Pearson provided a sober assessment of the challenges and opportunities, ending with the observation that “even people with generous and understanding hearts, and peaceful instincts in their normal individual behavior, can become fighting and even savage national animals under the incitements of collective emotion. Why this happens is the core of our problem of peace and war.”
In his Nobel remarks, Pearson left this tension unresolved. But, as Jahn noted in his introductory remarks, two years earlier Pearson had offered at least a glimmer of hope when in a lecture given at Princeton University he said: “The fact is, that to every challenge given by the threat of death and destruction, there has always been the response from free men: It shall not be. By these responses man has not only saved himself, but has ensured his future.”
Today, more than six decades since Pearson’s speech, we are grappling again by a variety of threats of death and destruction. Hopefully, at yet another critical moment, someone like Lester Pearson will step forward to help guide us away from that precipice and, hopefully, enough people will be wise enough to listen to him.
Be well, stay safe, fight for justice, and work for peace.