Sir Ralph Norman Angell (26 December 1872 – 7 October 1967) was an English lecturer, journalist, author, and Member of Parliament[1] for the Labour Party. Angell was one of the principal founders of the Union of Democratic Control. He served on the Council of the Royal Institute of International Affairs, was an executive for the World Committee against War and Fascism, a member of the executive committee of the League of Nations Union, and the president of the Abyssinia Association. He was knighted in 1931 and awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1933.[2] Angell was one of six children, born to Thomas Angell Lane and Mary (Brittain) Lane in Holbeach, Lincolnshire, England.[2] He was born as Ralph Norman Angell Lane, but later dropped the "Lane". He attended several schools in England,[2] the Lycée de St. Omer in France,[2] and the University of Geneva, while editing an English newspaper, published in Geneva.[2] Angell had while in Geneva, felt that Europe was "hopelessly entangled in insoluble problems".[2] While still only a young man of 17, he took the bold decision to emigrate to the West Coast of the United States,[2] where he was for several years to work as a vine planter, an irrigation-ditch digger, a cowboy, a California homesteader (after filing for American citizenship), a mail-carrier for his neighborhood, a prospector,[3] and then more closer to his natural skills, as reporter for the St. Louis Globe-Democrat and later the San Francisco Chronicle.[2] Due to family matters he returned to England briefly in 1898, then moved to Paris to work as sub-editor of the English language Daily Messenger,[3] and then as a staff contributor to Éclair. He also through this period acted as French correspondent for some American newspapers, to which he sent dispatches on the progress of the Dreyfus case.[2] From 1905 to 1912, he became the Paris editor for the Daily Mail.[2] Back in England again, he joined the Labour Party in 1920 and was MP for Bradford North from 1929 to 1931. In 1931 he was knighted for his public service, and later in 1933 he was presented with the Nobel Peace Prize.[2] Angell spent his remaining years at his Northey Island Farm, and died at the age of 94 in Croydon, Surrey.[3] Angell is most widely remembered for his 1909 pamphlet, Europe's Optical Illusion, which was published the following year (and many years thereafter) as the book, The Great Illusion. (The anti-war film The Grand Illusion took its title from his pamphlet.) The thesis of the book was that the integration of the economies of European countries had grown to such a degree that war between them would be entirely futile, making militarism obsolete. This quotation from the "Synopsis" to the popular 1913 edition summarizes his basic argument. Aristide Briand / Gustav Stresemann / Austen Chamberlain (1926) · Ferdinand Buisson / Ludwig Quidde (1927) · Frank B. Kellogg (1929) · Nathan Söderblom (1930) · Jane Addams / Nicholas Butler (1931) · Norman Angell (1933) · Arthur Henderson (1934) · Carl von Ossietzky (1935) · Carlos Saavedra Lamas (1936) · Robert Cecil (1937) · Nansen International Office for Refugees (1938) · International Committee of the Red Cross (1944) · Cordell Hull (1945) · Emily Balch / John Mott (1946) · Friends Service Council / American Friends Service Committee (1947) · John Boyd Orr (1949) · Ralph Bunche (1950)