The Roerich Pact and Banner of Peace is a 1947 publication of the Roerich Pact and Banner of Peace Committee in New York, gathering the case for an international treaty to protect the works of human culture in wartime. It is an expository volume rather than a narrative: part manifesto, part legal document, part record of a movement, assembled around the text of the Pact signed at the White House on April 15, 1935, by representatives of twenty-one governments of North, Central, and South America.
“The Roerich Pact and Banner of Peace is a new path to international unity and permanent, world peace.”
The Core Argument
The book rests on a single conviction: that the treasures of human genius belong to everyone, and that a flag can shield them. Educational, artistic, religious, and scientific institutions, along with all sites of cultural significance, ought to be deemed inviolable and respected by all nations in war and peace alike. The Pact is offered as an open treaty any government may sign, and the Banner of Peace as the rallying emblem of a pan-humanistic movement meant to draw public attention to a project already approved by many countries.
The Foreword frames the moment as a turning point. Great new ideas mark the beginning of new eras, though the man in the street rarely notices the threshold he is crossing. As human consciousness expands, it becomes imperative to support movements that improve life, and the Roerich Pact is presented as precisely such a path—a route to international unity and permanent world peace.
Inside the Book
The Main Text
The central essay argues that contemporary life is changing rapidly and that signs of a new evolution knock at every door. Real, unconventional science feels a responsibility before coming generations; the harm of negativity is gradually being understood; and an enlightened positiveness, practiced in merciful tolerance, can prepare vital happiness for the next generation, turning vague abstractions into beneficent realities.
The vision is of an epoch-making day when the one Banner of Culture is unfurled over every country and every centre of spirit, beauty, and knowledge, calling all people to revere human genius, respect culture, and revalue labour as the only true measure of values. From childhood, people would see a sign of peace and culture guarding the treasures of all mankind above petty divisions and the illusory frontiers of enmity and hatred. The text insists that a spiritual garden needs daily watering like a garden of flowers, and that the creative values of the spirit must hold the leading place. Workers of Culture should be marked by untiring vigilance, their difficult path eased; the Great Ones should be given their place, their names no longer personal property but the inheritance of pan-human Culture, safeguarded benevolently. Their self-sacrificing labour and creative sowing—often buried under the dirt of non-understanding and the weeds of ignorance—should be continued.
Asked what country and future constitution one dreams of, the answer offered is the country of Great Culture, where peace reigns and Knowledge and Beauty are revered. Everything created by hostility is impractical and perishable; history shows that peaceful creativeness was necessary for progress. The hand tires from the sword, but the creating hand sustained by the Spirit is untiring and unconquerable. No sword can destroy the heritage of Culture; the human mind may deviate, but it will realign at the pre-destined hour.
The essay reaches for the Red Cross as its model. Medical vitalizing remedies cannot act suddenly—time is needed to penetrate nerve centres and revitalize nerve substance—yet it is undeferrable to act under a sign like the Red Cross of Culture. Humanity is accustomed to the Red Cross, which affirms humanitarianism; the same realization must surround the Sign of Culture. One must not think of Culture only while digesting dinner; it is needed during hunger and cold. As the Red Cross shines for the wounded, so should the Sign of Culture burn for the physically and spiritually famished. When a Red Cross ambulance hurries through the streets, all traffic stops; likewise, for the Sign of Culture we should give up usual habits, vulgar sediments, and the dusty limitations of ignorance.
Culture and Peace are named the most sacred goal of Humanity. In days of spiritual and material confusion, the disturbed spirit strives toward these radiant strongholds, and people should not unite only abstractly but each in his own field bring them into actual life. The text warns against fearing enthusiasm—only the ignorant and spiritually impotent scoff, and such scoffing is itself a sign of inspiration for the true Legion of Honour. Nothing can impede dedication to the service of Culture if we believe and give our most flaming thoughts. Above all confusions, the Angels sing of Peace and Goodwill; no guns or explosives can silence those choirs; idealism as the Teaching of Good remains the quickest-reaching and most renovating principle in life.
The Nobel Nomination
A reprint from the New York Times of Sunday, March 3, 1929, reports Roerich’s nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize. A cablegram from Paris to the Roerich Museum at 310 Riverside Drive stated that names submitted to the Nobel Commission—members of the Norwegian Parliament at Oslo—included Secretary Kellogg of the United States, Senator Jouvenel of France, Professor Nicholas Roerich, former Premier Ramsay MacDonald of Great Britain, and former Premier Herriot of France. Roerich’s name was presented officially through the Department of International Law of the University of Paris, by a committee comprising officials and members of universities of various countries. Reportedly the first time an artist and scientist had been nominated, the case rested on efforts for international peace through art and culture, which brought better understanding of international relations. The committee noted that since 1890 Roerich had forcefully expounded international brotherhood through writings, lectures, researches, and paintings; that his propaganda for peace had penetrated more than twenty-one countries; that as one of the greatest artists his paintings illustrated beauty and spiritual light; and that the Roerich Museum in New York was founded so people might have permanent recourse to his teachings. Lasting international peace, the committee concluded, comes only through education and steady propaganda for brotherhood created by culture, poetry, and beauty—his works amounting to a great summons for love among men.
The Banner of Peace Symbol
The appendix traces the sign of the triad across the world. It has been read variously as past, present, and future enclosed in the ring of Eternity, or as religion, science, and art held in the circle of Culture—of the most universal character. The oldest Indian symbol, Chintamani, sign of happiness, is composed of it. It appears in the Temple of Heaven in Peking, in the Three Treasures of Tibet, on the breast of the Christ in Memling’s painting, on the Madonna of Strasbourg, on the shields of Crusaders and the coat of arms of the Templars, and on the blades of Caucasian swords called “Gurda.” It surfaces in philosophical systems, on images of Gessar Khan and Rigden Djapo, on the “Tamga” of Timurlane, and on the coat of arms of the Popes.
The Formal Draft and the Signing
The volume reproduces the formal draft of the Pact alongside a photostat of the New York Times of April 16, 1935, under the headline “Two Americas Join in Cultural Pact,” documenting the White House signing the day before in the presence of President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Endorsements Across the World
Later sections record the movement’s widening reach: a 1937 Baltic Congress thesis, a 1938 endorsement from the Nagari Pracharini Sabha, the 1946 Sixth All-India Cultural Unity Conference, and a resolution from Calcutta. The book also preserves the roster of the 1933 Third International Convention, held in Washington on November 17–18, with its delegate lists.
The Roster of Supporters
The closing apparatus is a roster of endorsers identified by name and office—an index of how far the appeal travelled. Among them are M. Zelemir Mazuranic, Delegate of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia to the League of Nations and Senator; Bishop Francis J. McConnell of New York City; Bishop Charles L. Mead of Kansas City; Prince Bianchi de Medicis; Dr. E. D. Merrill, Director of the New York Botanical Garden; William M. Milliken of the Cleveland Museum of Art; C. Powell Minnigerode of the Corcoran Art Gallery; Dr. Louis J. Moss, President of The United Synagogue of America; Dr. William A. Neilson, President of Smith College; Edward A. Parsons of the New Orleans Public Library; Mrs. Eleanor Patterson; Alfred G. Pelikan of the Milwaukee Art Institute; George A. Plimpton; Duncan Phillips of the Phillips Memorial Art Gallery; Reginald Poland of the Fine Arts Gallery, San Diego; Cordelia Sargent Pond of the Art Museum in Springfield, Massachusetts; Prof. A. Geouffre de la Pradelle, Professor of International Law at the University of Paris; the Rettore of the University of Bologna; Dr. C. R. Richards of Lehigh University; Dr. Frederick B. Robinson of the College of the City of New York; Hon. Henry L. Roosevelt, Assistant Secretary of the Navy; Mrs. Charles Cary Rumsey; A. Bertram Samuels; Hardinge Scholle of the Museum of the City of New York; Dr. Charles C. Selecman of Southern Methodist University; Mrs. E. J. Shepard; Jouett Shouse; William A. Slade of The Folger Shakespeare Library; Edmund D. Soper of the Association of American Colleges; Forrest B. Spaulding of the Des Moines Public Library; Dr. E. L. Stephens of Southwestern Louisiana Institute; J. G. Phelps Stokes; Adam Strohm of the Detroit Public Library; Mrs. Mary Cooke Swartout of the Montclair Art Museum; Dr. Jno. T. Tigert of the University of Florida; Ernst Tomel, Rektor of the University of Vienna; R. N. Trezise of A.M.O.R.C.; Dr. R. E. Tulloss of Wittenberg College; Dr. Robert Ernest Vinson of Western Reserve University; Bishop Raymond J. Wade of Stockholm; Mrs. Henry A. Wallace; Harry W. Watrous, President of the National Academy of Design; Dr. G. B. Woods, Dean of American University; Dr. Mary E. Woolley, President of Mt. Holyoke College; and Malcolm G. Wyer of the Denver Public Library.
The Bibliography and Organization
A bibliography of 279 numbered entries documents the movement through articles, monographs, poems, conference programs, and newspaper reports in English, French, Russian, Polish, Serbian, Lithuanian, Latvian, Spanish, German, Estonian, Yiddish, Mongolian, Hindustani, and Urdu. Recurring authors include Nicholas Roerich, Dr. Georges Chklaver, Frances R. Grant, Vladimir A. Shibayev, Colonel A. E. Mahon, Dzambulat Dzanti, Vsevolod N. Ivanov, Richard Rudzitis, P. Tarabilda, and K. P. Padmanabhan Tampy; recurring venues include the Biosophical Review, Occultism & Yoga of Belgrade, the Maha Bodhi Journal, the Scholar Annual of Palghat, Gand Artistique, Ossetie of Paris, the Roerich Museum Bulletin, Pakt Rericha of Warsaw, and Rericho Paktas of Kaunas. Several entries record the White House signing of April 15, 1935, with addresses by Franklin D. Roosevelt and Henry A. Wallace and photographs of Roosevelt, Wallace, and Felipe Espil, the Argentine Ambassador. Others note the Bruges Conference of September 13–15, 1931, the Third International Convention at Washington on November 17–18, 1933, ratification in America, and endorsements by the Indian History Congress and the Nagari Pracharini Sabha.
The book closes with the organizational roster of the Roerich Pact and Banner of Peace at 200 West 57th Street, New York 19: Prof. Nicholas Roerich as Protector; Dudley Fosdick, Chairman; Joseph J. Weed, Vice-Chairman; Sina Fosdick, Executive Secretary; and a list of members. Vice-Chairmen for other countries include Jose Albuerne and T. Rodrigo de Lara for Argentina, Barnett D. Conlan for England, Dr. George Chklaver and A. de la Pradelle for France, Asit K. Haldar, Dr. Amarnath Jha, and L. M. Sen for India, Prof. A. G. de Rocha Madahil for Portugal, and Prof. E. Schaub-Koch for Switzerland. Corresponding Secretaries include S. Sanjiva Dev, R. Rentz, and K. P. P. Tampy for India, R. S. Fontes for the Portuguese Colonies, and Gail and Sana Mouromtseff for the United States.
Key Ideas
The Red Cross of Culture is the book’s governing analogy. Just as the Red Cross affirms humanitarianism and stops traffic in the street, the Sign of Culture should command the same instinctive reverence—not a sentiment reserved for comfortable moments, but one needed during hunger and cold, for the spiritually as well as the physically famished. The Banner is not merely a legal device but a pedagogical one: children should grow up seeing it, so that reverence for the treasures of mankind becomes second nature, placed above petty divisions and illusory frontiers.
A second idea concerns labour and value. The text calls for labour to be revalued as the only measure of true values, and for the creative worker to be honoured while still alive and struggling—his name becoming the property of pan-human Culture rather than a private possession. The self-sacrificing labourer, buried under the dirt of non-understanding and the weeds of ignorance, is the figure the movement means to protect.
A third is the universality of the symbol itself. The triad and ring appear from Peking’s Temple of Heaven to the shields of Crusaders, from Tibetan treasures to the coat of arms of the Popes—evidence, in the book’s telling, that the sign belongs to no single creed or nation but to humanity as such.
Themes
The volume is best read as a work of interwar idealism, written in the conviction that culture is a form of diplomacy and that beauty can do what treaties alone cannot. Its argument that lasting peace comes only through education and steady propaganda for brotherhood—rather than through political machinery—places it squarely in a tradition of cultural internationalism that ran alongside, and sometimes against, the League of Nations.
There is also a spiritual autobiography running beneath the institutional record. Roerich appears here as artist, scientist, and prophet at once; the Nobel nomination, the museum, the paintings, and the Pact are presented as a single continuous effort. The recurring language of the Spirit, of the Great Ones, and of Angels singing above the confusions of the world gives the book a devotional register that sits uneasily with, yet animates, its legal apparatus.
And there is a quiet argument about time. The text repeatedly invokes coming generations—the child who will see the Banner, the responsibility of science before those not yet born, the pre-destined hour at which the human mind will realign. The Pact is offered less as a solution to present conflict than as a seed planted for a future that the present can only prepare.
Why It Matters
The Roerich Pact anticipated, by decades, the logic later embodied in the 1954 Hague Convention for the protection of cultural property in armed conflict: that the monuments and institutions of civilization are not the property of belligerents but the inheritance of everyone. The 1935 White House signing, with twenty-one American republics as signatories, made it the first such instrument of its kind.
The book’s documentary value is considerable. Its bibliography, its delegate rosters, its endorsements from university presidents, museum directors, bishops, and librarians across several continents, and its record of conferences from Bruges to Washington to Benares preserve the texture of a movement that has largely faded from memory. Read today, it is a portrait of a particular hope—that a flag could be raised above the frontiers of enmity, and that the creating hand, sustained by the Spirit, would prove untiring and unconquerable.
