Last night, I received an e-mail whose Subject line was “Hmmm.” The note said, “Two days since Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize and still no commentary? You’ve checked yourself into an asylum, haven’t you?” No, I’m fine, thanks. I don’t have a great deal to add to the general commentary; our editorial, here, speaks for me. But I thought you might enjoy a couple of tidbits.

I’ve read some commentary that the Nobel Committee has handed Obama a “poisoned chalice,” because now his freedom of action will be constrained: How can he take military action, when necessary — or persevere in war, when necessary — while holding the title of “peace laureate”? As it happens, this issue arose in Norway, about Norway, long ago. Let me explain.

In his will, Alfred Nobel asked the Storting — the Norwegian parliament — to handle the peace prize, appointing a committee of five. (That is, Nobel wished the Storting to appoint the committee of five.) The Norwegians agreed. Most people in the country were thrilled to have this prize to administer — it was a feather in their national cap. But, in the first years of the prize — this was the first decade of the 20th century — there were some grumbles. Let me quote from a marvelous book by a marvelous, and now-forgotten, historian: Norway and the Nobel Peace Prize by Oscar J. Falnes. It was published in 1938; Falnes lived from 1898 to 1989.

There was an uneasy feeling [in Norway] that Nobel’s disposition had somehow vitiated the Storting’s freedom of action. Whenever called upon to act in the field of peace and related matters, said [a nationalist newspaper], the Storting had first to inquire, not what would most redound to the country’s welfare, but how would the friends of peace react and what would have been Nobel’s intention. That the Storting should thus be “running errands” for a private Swedish citizen seemed strange and “contrary to nature.” What right, anyway, did Nobel have to lay this restraint upon the Storting; more than that, what right had the Storting had to assume this obligation?

And so on.

Okay, tidbit No. 2: Some people have taken up the question of what Obama should do with the money. You may wish to know how Theodore Roosevelt dealt with this question. He won in 1906, for settling the Russo-Japanese war — and this prize to him is one of the most “controversial” Nobel prizes ever handed out. Some are still stewing about it, because he was a “warrior,” not the typical peace-prize winner.

He wrote to the chairman of the Nobel Committee, “What I did I was able to accomplish only as the representative of the Nation of which for the time being I am President.” And here I will quote Edmund Morris, in his biography Theodore Rex:

[TR] added that, upon reflection, he had decided to donate the prize money — almost thirty-seven thousand dollars — to “a foundation to establish at Washington a permanent Industrial Peace Committee.”
To Kermit, he explained that after consultation with Edith, he could not accept as a personal gift a sum of money earned as a public figure. “But I hated to come to the decision, because I very much wisht for the extra money to leave to all you children.”

Touching, isn’t it?