Sixty-eight years ago there was born in Prague to an old aristocratic family a girl who was destined to become one of the world's greatest apostles of peace, who, in fact, won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1905. When she was thirty-three years of age, this girl became the wife of Baron Gundacar von Suttner, who died in 1902, and in collaboration with whom she used to write, under the pseudonym of " B. Orlaff." Curiously enough, it was not until 1887, when she was forty-four years of age, that the Baroness discovered the mission of her life. For some time she had been travelling over Europe, and then she heard of the existence of the National Peace and Arbitration Association of London. She had already done some novel-writing, but now, fired by her new ideal, she added to the book on which she was at that time engaged, " Age of Machinery," a last chapter dealing with the international peace idea, and describing the London Association. Her next book, however, was the one which brought her into the front ranks of living writers. In 1890 appeared her " Lay Down Your Arms " - a book that has been translated into all European languages, sold in hundreds of thousands of copies, and which induced the Tsar to issue his famous peace rescript.

Baroness von Suttner Pietzner