I do not see very clearly what great expenses either the Peace League or the Peace Congress can have to bear. Nevertheless I am quite ready to make a pecuniary contribution to its work, and I hasten to send you for this object a check, inclosed herewith, for £80 sterling. What you need to get, I think, is not the money but the programme. Wishes alone do not assure peace. The like may be said of big dinners with big speeches. One ought to be able to present well-minded governments with an acceptable plan. To demand disarmament is almost to make one’s self ridiculous without profiting any one. To demand the immediate establishment of a court of arbitration is to come into collision with a thousand prejudices and to make every ambitious man an obstructer. To succeed, one ought to be content with more modest beginnings, and do as they do in England with legislative projects whose success is dubious. In such cases they content themselves with passing a temporary law, limited in duration to two years or even to one year. I do not think there would be found many governments that would refuse to take into consideration such a modest proposition, provided it were supported by statesmen of note. Would it be too much to ask, for example, that for one year the European governments should engage to refer to a tribunal formed for this purpose any difference arising between them; or if they should refuse to take this step, to defer every act of hostility until the expiration of the period stipulated? This would be apparently little, but it is just by being content with little that one arrives at great results. A year is such a small period of time in the lives of nations, and the most blustering minister will tell himself that it is not worth while to break by force a convention of such short duration. And at the expiration of that period all the states will make haste to renew their peace compact for another year. Thus, without a shock and almost without realizing the fact, they will come to a period of prolonged peace. Then only will it be of any use to think of proceeding little by little to that disarmament which all good men and almost all governments desire. And suppose that in spite of everything a quarrel should break out between two governments, do you not think that nine times out of ten they would calm down during the obligatory armistice which they would have to respect? Believe, dear Baroness, in my affectionate sentiments, A. Nobel