Ernesto Teodoro Moneta
President, Lombard League of Peace
Country: Italy
Born: September 20, 1833, Milan
Died: February 10, 1918
Ernesto Teodoro Monetawas an Italian journalist and international activist on behalf of peace (except where Italian interests required war). He won (with Louis Renault) the Nobel Peace Prize in 1907.
The range of activities in which Moneta engaged for the propagation of world peace is impressive. In 1890 he began to issue an annual almanac called L'Amico della pace. After his retirement as editor of Il Secolo, he continued to contribute to its columns from time to time and to republish many of his articles in pamphlets and periodicals. Ever aware of the value of propaganda for peace, he even printed one-page tracts and distributed them to rural schoolmasters. In 1898 he founded a fortnightly review, La Vita internazionale, which gained sufficient prestige to ensure publication on a regular basis for many years during a period when most such periodicals languished in Italy for lack of interest and financial support.
Moneta 's work for peace was not solely of a literary nature. He became the Italian representative on the Commission of the International Peace Bureau in 1895. He attended peace congresses for many years, and his courtly, deceptively diffident presence became increasingly familiar and respected. He had encouraged l'Unione lombarda per la pace e l'arbitrato internazionale [the Lombard Union for International Peace and Arbitration] since its foundation in 1887, and had himself founded, besides several organizations of an ephemeral nature, the Società per la pace e la giustizia internazionale [Society for International Peace and Justice], which lasted from 1887 until 1937, long after his death.