Le Nord : revue internationale des Pays de Nord - 01.06.1938, Page 17

WHEN KINGS AND FOREIGN
MINISTERS MF.F.T
By C. J. Hambro.
THE present publication — »Le Nord« — is the natural
product of an evolution, dating back to the first year of
the Great War, an evolution which has made an institution
of meetings between the Ministers of Foreign Affairs of the
Northern Countries. But the idea of issuing a Northern quarterly
or magazine in the leading European languages to present the
Scandinavian Countries to the world is by no means a new one.
More than fifty years ago Bjornstjerne Bjornson was an advo-
cate of this idea, and when, in 1900, he was made a member of
the Nobel peace prize committee, appointed by the Norwegian
Storting, he proposed at once the publication of a Revue Nobel —
an organ for defending the rights of suppressed minorities, for
protesting against international injustice and instructing the world
about the small nations and their achievements. It was an old
and deeprooted idea of his that his own country, with Denmark,
Iceland and Sweden — and a liberated Finland — might have
a world mission by creating at least a spiritual commonwealth of
states. He once coined the slogan: »All that is good has come
from the small nations — or from the great when they were
small.«
In every session of the Nobel Committee he fought for his idea.
The review should have been published in French, and he wanted
Labori, then at the top of his fame, to be European editor-in-
chief; Bjornson’s son-in-law, Albert Langen, head of the well-
known firm in Munich, should have been in charge of the prac-
tical side of the enterprise. The Nobel Committee had not the
funds to finance such an ambitious scheme, and it was Bjornson’s
idea to start a European subscription for support. But he could not
get his colleagues to agree that this was a natural task for the
Nobel peace prize committee and was rather disgusted with them.
The sentiment may have been reciprocated; for when his term
on the committee expired in 1906 Bjornson was not re-elected,
and the others were.
The time had not yet arrived for any such joint attempt, and
the family feeling between the Northern Countries for many
reasons was rather heavily tinged with cousinly jealousies and