Leadership Quote by Frank B. Kellogg

Kellogg is selling peace the way the modern world reliably understands motivation: as a contest with a spotlight and a prize. The line is polite, almost bureaucratic, but the intent is sharp. He flatters the Committee as a kind of moral switchboard - if they offer the right award, global attention will snap to the “interest of peace,” and ambition will be rerouted from conquest to conscience. In other words, he’s arguing that peace doesn’t just need ideals; it needs incentives, publicity, and a stage.

The subtext is that the post-World War I order is fragile and exhausting. People are traumatized, nations are rearming, and “never again” is already starting to look negotiable. Kellogg’s phrasing leans on the era’s growing faith in international institutions and public opinion: get the world watching, and leaders will behave. The sentence is structured like a chain reaction - prize -> attention -> inspiration -> effort - because he’s trying to make peace seem practical, almost automatic, if only the right mechanism exists.

Context matters: Kellogg was central to the Kellogg-Briand Pact (1928), the high-minded attempt to outlaw war. That project depended less on enforcement than on moral pressure and reputational cost. This quote reflects that bet. It’s not naive exactly; it’s strategic about human vanity. The wager is that prestige can do what armies can’t: discipline nations by making peace the thing worth being celebrated for.