Moneta, Ernesto Teodoro

(1833–1918)

   Moneta, a Milanese, won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1907, the only Italian to have done so. He was an ardent nationalist who fought with Giuseppe Garibaldi during the wars of liberation 1859–1860 and in the war against Austria in 1866. He became a journalist and as editor of one of Italy’s most important daily newspapers, Il Secolo, between 1867 and 1895, was a powerful influence on public opinion. He was strongly anticlerical (though a religious believer) and sought to mitigate the anti-Austrian and anti-French fervor of the Italian masses. Moneta published a four-volume work entitled Le guerre,le insurrezioni e la pace nel secolo XIX(Wars,Insurrections and Peace in the Nineteenth Century) between 1903 and 1910. He also edited a prestigious fortnightly journal called La Vita Internazionale, which attracted contributions from the leading radical and socialist intellectuals of the day. The theme of his later work was the futility of war: its inevitable failure to provide worthwhile solutions for human problems. Moneta served as Italy’s representative on the International Peace Bureau from 1895 onward and founded the Societa per la pace e la giustizia internazionale (Society for International Peace and Justice) in 1887. The society’s objectives were to educate popular sentiment in favor of ending war; favor the brotherhood of all peoples; propose arbitration as a solution for human conflicts; and abolish standing armies and replace them with “armed nations.” Moneta strongly opposed Italy’s colonial adventurism in Libyabut supported Italy’s entrance into World War I. His pacifism remained conjugated with patriotism: He insisted that world peace did not mean the dissolution of nations in a cosmopolitan melting pot, but rather the integration of nations into a just international order. Moneta died of pneumonia in Milan in 1918.