As a result of the Portsmouth peace, I was given the Nobel Peace Prize.  This consisted of a medal, which I kept, and a sum of $40,000, which I turned over as a foundation of industrial peace to a board of trustees which included Oscar Straus, Seth Low and John Mitchell.  In the present state of the world’s development industrial peace is even more essential than international peace; and it was fitting and appropriate to devote the peace prize to such a purpose.  In 1910, while in Europe, one of my most pleasant experiences was my visit to Norway, where I addressed the Nobel Committee, and set forth in full the principles upon which I had acted, not only in this particular case but throughout my administration.

I received another gift which I deeply appreciated, an original copy of Sully’s “Memoires” of “Henry le Grand,” sent me with the following inscription (I translate it roughly): 

PARIS, January, 1906.

“The undersigned members of the French Parliamentary Group of International Arbitration and Conciliation have decided to tender President Roosevelt a token of their high esteem and their sympathetic recognition of the persistent and decisive initiative he has taken towards gradually substituting friendly and judicial for violent methods in case of conflict between Nations.

“They believe that the action of President Roosevelt, which has realized the most generous hopes to be found in history, should be classed as a continuance of similar illustrious attempts of former times, notably the project for international concord known under the name of the ’Great Design of Henry IV’ in the memoirs of his Prime Minister, the Duke de Sully.  In consequence they have sought out a copy of the first edition of these memoirs, and they take pleasure in offering it to him, with the request that he will keep it among his family papers.”

The signatures include those of Emile Loubet, A. Carnot, d’Estournelles de Constant, Aristide Briand, Sully Prudhomme, Jean Jaures, A. Fallieres, R. Poincare, and two or three hundred others.

Of course what I had done in connection with the Portsmouth peace was misunderstood by some good and sincere people.  Just as after the settlement of the coal strike, there were persons who thereupon thought that it was in my power, and was my duty, to settle all other strikes, so after the peace of Portsmouth there were other persons—­not only Americans, by the way,—­who thought it my duty forthwith to make myself a kind of international Meddlesome Mattie and interfere for peace and justice promiscuously over the world.  Others, with a delightful non-sequitur, jumped to the conclusion that inasmuch as I had helped to bring about a beneficent and necessary peace I must of necessity have changed my mind about war being ever necessary.  A couple of days after peace was concluded I wrote to a friend:  “Don’t you be misled by the fact that just at the moment men are speaking well of me.  They will speak ill soon enough.  As Loeb remarked to me to-day, some time soon I shall have to spank some little international brigand, and then all the well-meaning idiots will turn and shriek that this is inconsistent with what I did at the Peace Conference, whereas in reality it will be exactly in line with it.”