The Indianapolis times. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1922-1965, 1936-04-07
Award Peace
Writer $4,000
Eddie Cantor's Prize Goes
to Missouri Youth.

Times Special
NEW YORK, April winner of
Eddie Cantor's $4,000 peace scholar
ship is Lloyd Lewis, 17-year old
Plattsburg (Mo) high school junior.
His essay on How Can America
Stay Out of WARP" was chosen by
the four judges, Robert M. Hutchins
of the University of Chicago, Fred
erick Bertrand Robinson of the Col
lege of the City of New York, Ray
Lyman Wilbur of Leland Stanford
University and Henry Noble Mac
Cracker of Vassar College as best of
212,00 submitted by high school STU
dents of the nation.
The prize essay follows:
Peace is an expensive luxury. 1t
is so expensive that the countries
have never yet been willing to pay
its price. The world can have peace
whenever it really want it more than
anything else, but until now men
have never wanted peace as much as
at the present.
THE price of peace is free move
ment of trade, free movement of
populations and adjustable distribu-
tions Of territory. This is an expen-
Sive demand. 1t will not be until
we see the superlative value of peace
that we shall be willing to meet it.
AT the present moment we have
national trade barriers that have
set up artificial and expensive sys-
~ nH ~ h
the normal markets in which they
might dispose of their goods. Our
own tariff is an example. 1t was
adopted over the protest of so ma
tons. 1t. was one of the most diff
cult policies of the contemporary
world making for a dislocation of
normal world markets, shutting off
other nations from natural outlets
for their surplus products and so
condemning millions of their people
to live at starvation levels. We can
not escape responsibility for the re-
sulting tendency to war.
Would we fight rather than sur
render the right to control our tariffs
to suit our own welfare? Would
Great Britain call out her army and
navy before she would part with a
square mile of her empire? These
are the questions whose answers re-
veal whether we are willing to pay
the price of peace. My own guess is
that there are some things we value
more highly than peace, and this
leads me TO the belief thai 1t is not
until We are willing to say that we
want peace more than economic or
territorial or colonial advantages
that we shall have peace.
This has produced the most en-
thusiastic belief of our current
world, namely. that we serve our
own best interest to the nation
above all other. The supreme good
in the mind of the average man is
not the building of peace among
nations, but the securing of the adj
vantages of his own nation before
that of any or all other nations. AS
long as this is true every man is the
raw material of an army, and pop
ular psychology supports our own
economic nationalism in a tendency
toward international strife. 1t will
not be until We are ready to put
international good above national
advantage that we shall be prepared
for peace.
THE first advance on the road to
peace is to recognize its cost. Peace
Is an easy word to praise, but cost
~ one to live with. Nevertheless, il
. only on the keeping the peace
that We shall achieve those goals
that set men free. There is no
other way. There is no cheaper
way"