Nobelprize for peace: Bertha von Suttner

Bertha von Suttner, Nobelprice 1905

Bertha von Suttner , Nobel Price for peace 1905
“Bertha von Suttner deliverd her lecture , dressed in black , her voice husky with emotion, using no contrived appeals, no gesture ,  no change of facial expression”

The Evolution of the Peace Movement

The stars of eterna l truth and right have always shone in the firmament of human understanding. The process of bringing them down to earth, remolding them into practical forms, imbuing them with vitality, and then making use of them, has been a long one.

One of the eternal truths is that happiness is created and developed in peace, and one of the eternal rights is  the ind ividual’s right to live. The strongest of all instincts, that of self-preservation, is an assertion of this right,  affirmed end sanctified by the ancient commandment “Thou sha lt not kill.”
It is unnecessary for me to point out how little this right and this commandment are respected in the present  state of civ ilizat ion. Up to the present time, the military organization of our society has been founded upon a denial of t he possibility of peace, a contempt for the value of human life, and an acceptance of the urgetb kill.
And because t his has been so, as far back as world history records (and how short is the actual time, for what are a few thousand years) , most people believe that it must always remain so. That the world is ever changing and developing is sti ll not generally recognized, since the knowledge of the laws of evolution, which control all  life, whether in the geological timespan or in society, belongs to a recent period of scientific development.
It is erroneous to believe that the future will of necessity continue the trends of the past and the present. The past and present move away from us in the stream of time like the passing landscape of the riverbanks, as the vessel carr’ying mankind is borne inexorably by the current toward new shores .
That the future will always be one degree better than what is past and discarded is the conviction of those who understand the laws of evolution and try to assist their action. Only through the understanding and deliberate application of natura l laws and forces, in the material domain as well as in the moral, will the technical devices and the  social institutions be created which will make our lives easier, richer, and more noble. These things are  called ideals as long as they exist in the realm of ideas; they stand as ach ievements of progress as soon as  they are transformed into visible, living, and effective forms.