Peace: 1929

Kellogg, Frank Billings (1856-1937), was an American lawyer, diplomat, and statesman. He won the 1929 Nobel Peace Prize for his work in framing the Kellogg-Briand Pact of 1928. In 1930, Kellogg was appointed a judge of the Permanent Court of International Justice.

Kellogg was born on Dec. 22, 1856, in Potsdam, New York. He had little formal education but read law and was admitted to the bar in 1877. He prosecuted business trusts, especially the oil, railroad, and paper monopolies.

Kellogg served as a Republican U.S. senator from Minnesota from 1917 to 1923 and as U.S. ambassador to the United Kingdom in 1924 and 1925. Kellogg was secretary of state from 1925 to 1929. He died on Dec. 21, 1937.

Contributor: James S. Olson, Ph.D., Distinguished Professor of History, Sam Houston State University.

Kellogg-Briand Pact, also called the Pact of Paris, condemned the use of war to solve international problems and called for peaceful settlement of disputes. French Foreign Minister Aristide Briand originally proposed the pact in 1927 as a treaty between France and the United States. Frank B. Kellogg, the U.S. secretary of state, enlarged the plan in 1928 to include all nations. It was signed by 15 nations in Paris on Aug. 27, 1928. By 1934, 64 nations had signed. The signers included all the nations in the world at that time except Argentina, Bolivia, El Salvador, Uruguay, and the tiny countries of Andorra, Liechtenstein, Monaco, and San Marino.

Many nations signed the pact with certain limitations. For example, most reserved the right to wage war in self-defense. Japan claimed this right in the 1930's when it fought China without formally declaring war. The pact provided no way to enforce its provisions and could not prevent attacks, such as the one Italy launched against Ethiopia in 1935. Although the pact has been violated on many occasions, it has never officially been canceled.

After World War II (1939-1945), the Allies used the pact against individuals, rather than against nations. The Kellogg-Briand Pact became part of the legal basis for the Nuremberg and Tokyo war crimes trials.

Contributor: Robert H. Ferrell, Ph.D., Distinguished Professor of History, Indiana University, Bloomington.