The Nation: Peace Candidate Nixon

Is Richard Nixon the same sort of peacemaker as Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson? They are the only two American Presidents to receive the Nobel Peace Prize. Now Senate Republican Leader Hugh Scott and Editor Elizabeth MacDonald Manning of Finance magazine, a monthly for bank ers and economists, are joining forces to nominate Nixon for the prize. In a recent editorial, Finance asserted:

"Never a man to sit in a game with a weak hand, our President has put it all together. What the world has witnessed this year was the sudden conversion of an idealistic vision of peace into a more realistic version of working together instead of fighting wars."

Members of any national legislature have the right to nominate Peace Prize candidates. Senator Scott points to Nixon's reduction of American troops in Viet Nam from 500,000 to fewer than 50,000, the SALT agreements with the Soviet Union as well as the historic vis its to Russia and China, and the President's efforts to negotiate with the North Vietnamese for the release of American P.O.W.s. Involvement in war does not eliminate a statesman from consideration. Teddy Roosevelt rarely spoke as softly as he counseled other men to do, and he carried a sizable stick into Cuba and the Philippines.

For all his pacific reluctance, Woodrow Wilson led the U.S. into the first World War. True, the Viet Nam conflict seems to be coming to an end and Nixon may even be able to announce a cease fire before too long. But it seems highly unlikely that the Nobel Committee would bestow its cherished prize on the man who is still overseeing the worst conflict since World War II.