of Norway by Nazi Germany. According to historian Kåre Lunden, Koht was much hated by many because of his language reforms, which were routinely perceived as attacks and degradations on their preferred language. His ideals were dubbed "det kohtske knot", i.e. "the Kohtian mishmash". For his own part, Koht often used spellings that contrasted with both Nynorsk and Bokmål. The definite article, which is formally the suffix "-et", was substituted with the suffix "-e", such as in the titles of his publications and . Peace activism Koht's first travel abroad was in 1890, when he accompanied his father as well as Hans Jacob Horst and John Theodor Lund to an interparliamentary peace conference in London. In 1895 he was a founding member and board member of the Norwegian Peace Association, serving as chairman from 1900 to 1902. From 1901 to 1902 he edited his own monthly periodical named Fredstidende ("Peace Times"). The Peace Association was dominated by Liberal Party politicians—from a Marxist perspective, "bourgeois" people. Historian Nils Ivar Agøy had noted that the socialists who were active in the bourgeois peace movement—the most prominent being Koht, Adam Egede-Nissen and Carl Bonnevie—were "radicalised sons of the bourgeoisie". This meant that they were "capable of asserting themselves among the ship-owners and county governors in the board" of the Norwegian Peace Association. Koht also followed his own goals during his first period as chairman. He wanted to tie the "apolitical" peace movement closer to the labour movement, to create "economic justice" and to employ the use of arbitration in labour conflicts. These goals were not embraced by all of the members, particularly not those who wanted to keep the Peace Association politically neutral. A larger problem, however, was that Koht rated Norwegian nationalism higher than pacifism. He had thus carried out his compulsory military service "with fervor", notes Agøy. Koht demanded that the Peace Association did not resist to an armed defense of the "fatherland". The national convention in 1902 refused to acknowledge this principle, and Koht therefore resigned his membership. He was followed by others, as a result of a schism in the Peace Association between the pacifists and the more pragmatic peace activists. Koht has also been assessed as an ineffective organisational leader. The defense question more or less solved itself when the Swedish-Norwegian union was peacefully dissolved in 1905. Koht later returned to the Peace Association to serve as a