Transcriber’s Note:

The cover image was created by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain.

MEMOIRS OF BERTHA VON SUTTNER
THE RECORDS OF AN EVENTFUL LIFE

AUTHORIZED TRANSLATION

VOLUME II

PUBLISHED FOR THE INTERNATIONAL SCHOOL OF PEACE

GINN AND COMPANY, BOSTON AND LONDON

1910

COPYRIGHT, 1910, BY GINN AND COMPANY

ENTERED AT STATIONERS’ HALL

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

The Athenæum Press

GINN AND COMPANY · PROPRIETORS BOSTON · U.S.A.

CONTENTS OF VOLUME II

PART SEVEN
[CONTINUED]

XL
FROM HARMANNSDORF AND FROM CHICAGO

Slow increase · Far-reaching endeavors from our quiet corner · Childlessness · With Aunt Lotti · My brother · The World’s Fair at Chicago, and the Peace Congress · Olga Wisinger-Florian · I am represented by Olga Wisinger · Congress of Religions · Petition of the various ecclesiastical bodies to the governments in favor of a court of arbitration

So now there existed in the capital of Germany a Peace Society, about which as a center branch societies would presumably group themselves in all the larger German cities. The proposed task of forming a widespread public opinion was, therefore, well underway. I saw with delight, in my imagination, an undeviating development of the movement. I clearly recognized, however, that the beginnings were comparatively insignificant. What were our two or three thousand organized members compared to the thousand five hundred millions that populate the earth? And how puny, not only in numbers but also in power and reputation, compared to the representatives and supporters of the old system! But what is the significance of the first violet-dotted patch of grass compared to the fields, stretching miles and miles, still covered with the snows of March? It signifies that the spring is at hand. What signifies the first gleam of dawn penetrating the mantle of night? It signifies that the sunrise is coming. Thus I accepted the modest results achieved up to that time by the peace idea, and harbored no doubt that the element of spring, the element of light that abides in it, must come to fulfillment in gradual but uninterrupted and ever swifter progression.

I have no doubt of it either, even at the present day; but I have learned from experience that such movements do not take place in so straight a line and in such a regular tempo as I then supposed. It is a zigzag line, now attaining great height and speed, then sinking down again; it apparently vanishes, and then with a new start reaches quite unexpected points. And all direct, methodical (zielbewusste) work—to use the tiresome, hackneyed word—is on the one hand hampered, on the other helped, by unanticipated, invisible secondary influences; more often helped than hampered, for, where any innovation is to be introduced, its forces converge from all directions.

Our life was now richly filled. We enjoyed two special blessings which one can hardly think of in combination,—impetuous reaching out into the wide world, and peace in our quiet corner. Full of hopes, expectations, struggles, in flaming enthusiasm or in overwhelming indignation, we set sail into the future; and a sheltered, safe little nest, beautifully pillowed with love and gayety, was ours at that time.

Many expressed their pity for us because we were childless. The blessing of children is, indeed, regarded as the highest happiness; but I have never expressed in these memoirs one single word of regret for this lack, nor have we, either of us, ever complained of it. Possibly, if we had known that good fortune, we should not have been able to comprehend how such a deprivation can be borne without pain; but it is a fact, our childlessness never cost us a sigh. I explain this in this way: not only did we find perfect satisfaction in each other, but that need of living for the future which lies at the basis of the desire to have offspring and to work and provide for them was satisfied in our case by our vocation, which also was striving for the future, and which delighted in something still in its infancy, but growing and flourishing. Besides, we had our literary activity, and it is well known and recognized in popular language that authorship is a kind of paternity (Autorschaft ist eine Art Vaterschaft).

And yet how absolutely different my life had shaped itself from what had been anticipated in my childhood and youth! I often had at this time occasion to turn my thoughts back to those days of youth and childhood, and to refresh my recollections of them. My old Aunt Lotti, Elvira’s mother, who was now quite alone in the world and had nothing to love except me, had moved into our neighborhood. She lived about an hour’s walk from Harmannsdorf, and I used to drive over to see her at least once a week, and chat with her for an hour or two, on old reminiscences for the most part. She took the liveliest interest in my domestic happiness and my labors, and yet we liked best to talk together of times gone by, of the days when Elvira and I played “puff” together.

Aunt Lotti was really the only link that connected me with my early life. My brother was still alive, to be sure, but, except for an exchange of letters once in a great while, we were quite out of touch with each other. So in these recollections I have had nothing to say of him. He was an odd fish, living perfectly aloof from mankind and isolated in a small Dalmatian city, occupying himself with floriculture and chess. His company consisted of a number of cats. Solitary walks along the seashore, the reading of botanical and mineralogical works, were his only passions. I had not seen him since 1872, and up to the time of his death, which occurred a few years ago, we never met again.

In the year of 1893 we did not attend any Peace Congress. Ever since I was carried away by this movement, I have counted the stations of my recollections for the most part by journeys to Peace Congresses, for these always brought visible tokens of the progress of the cause that was so dear to my heart and the possibility of taking an active part in helping it along. They brought me into touch, too, with the old friends, and led to the formation of new friendships; finally, they took us to new places in environments hitherto unknown, and they procured for us that enjoyment which My Own drank in with the greatest avidity,—travel itself. To get into a carriage together, and then to be off and away—it was an indescribable joy!

The Congress this year was held at Chicago, in connection with the exposition which was called the “World’s Fair.” Our means were not sufficient for such a long journey and we gave it up. I intrusted the duty of representing me at this Congress to my friend Malaria, the celebrated painter Frau Olga Wisinger. She had been with us in the Austrian delegation at Rome, and was an enthusiastic adherent of the cause; so the mission was in good hands. The name “Malaria” is only a nickname and does not refer in any way to the great artist’s feverish propensities. This was its origin: at Rome all the participants had to register their names and occupations, that a list of those present might be printed and distributed; so in the Austrian group we read, “Signora Olga Wisinger, Malaria,” for that was the way the Italians had deciphered the word malerin, “painter.”

During the World’s Fair, countless congresses were held in Chicago, and one of them was the Congress of Religions. All the great sects of the world had sent their dignitaries to represent them. This was certainly the first time that the promulgators of different creeds had come together, not to proselyte or to battle with one another, but to bring out the principles that are common to them all. And Christian bishops, Mosaic rabbis, Buddhist and Mohammedan priests, found themselves at one in the principle: God is the father of all; therefore all are brethren. So there was also a peace principle resulting from this Congress of Religions.

The actual Peace Congress which met August 14–19, in the Art Institute, under the Administrative Department of the Columbian Exposition, was presided over by Josiah Quincy, Assistant Secretary of State. Among the participants and speakers was William Jennings Bryan, who in the year 1904 ran as Roosevelt’s opponent for the presidency of the United States, and who may perhaps at some future election win the victory.

In this Congress delegates from Africa and China participated. Europeans were only slimly represented. The journey across the great pond, which means for Americans only “a trip,” still frightens the inhabitants of our continent. Dr. Adolf Richter went from Germany, Dr. Darby from England, Moneta from Italy, and from Austria—“Malaria.” The Americans of course were well represented and by distinguished men,—scholars, judges, statesmen. A soldier even, General Charles H. Howard, gave an address on the International Tribunal. A special church convention joined the movement by referring to the projected petition of the various Christian bodies of the world to the governments in behalf of the Court of Arbitration. This plan was carried out, and the petition, which was signed by about a hundred ecclesiastical dignitaries of all countries, was subsequently laid before all the heads of governments. I was intrusted with the duty of presenting the copy destined for the Emperor of Austria.

XLI
VASÍLI VERESHCHÁGIN

Vereshchágin in Vienna · He does the honors at his exhibition · “All Quiet before Plevna” · “Apotheosis of War” · Moltke standing before this picture · A picture of what Vereshchágin himself had seen during the war and painted · Concerning a picture which he could not paint · Further reminiscences of his military life · His Napoleon pictures · A remark of William II regarding them · War and hunting

Now I will tell about Vasíli Vereshchágin. When I learned that the great Russian painter, who was battling with his brush against the same foe that I was fighting with my pen, was staying in Vienna, where he was exhibiting a number of his pictures, I hastened to the city to see those celebrated paintings,—“All Quiet before Plevna,” the “Apotheosis of War,” and all those other variously named indictments of war. Even in the titles that he gave his pictures the artist expressed the bitterness which, next to the pain, animated his brush. The sentinel forgotten in the wilderness of snow, standing there until the drift reaches half to his breast,—that was what Vereshchágin’s genius saw back of the generals’ well-known dispatch, “All quiet before Plevna”; and a pyramid of skulls surrounded by a flock of flapping ravens,—thus he depicted the “Apotheosis of War.”

Even before I had managed to get to the exhibition, I received a note from the painter inviting me to come to the studio on a certain day at ten o’clock in the morning; he would be there and would himself do the honors. We were on hand punctually, My Own and I. Vereshchágin received us at the door. He was of medium height, and wore a long gray beard; full of animation and fluent in speech (he spoke in French), he had a passionate nature subdued by irony.

“We are colleagues and comrades, gracious lady”; such was his greeting. And then he led us from picture to picture, and related how each came to be painted and what idea was in his mind as he worked. At many of the paintings we could not suppress a cry of horror.

“Perhaps you believe that is exaggerated? No, the reality is much more terrible. I have often been reproached for representing war in its evil, repulsive aspect; as if war had two aspects,—a pleasing, attractive side, and another ugly, repulsive. There is only one kind of war, with only one end and aim: the enemy must suffer as much as possible; must lose as many as possible in killed, wounded, and prisoners; must receive one blow after another until he asks for quarter.”

As we stopped in front of the “Apotheosis of War,” he called our attention to an inscription in small Russian letters near the border of the picture.

“You can’t read that; it is Russian and means, ‘Dedicated to the Conquerors of the Past: the Present and the Future.’ When the picture was on exhibition in Berlin, Moltke stood in front of it. I was by his side, and I translated the words for him; the dedication was a dig at him too.”

Another painting represented a road buried in a thick covering of snow, with here and there hands or feet sticking out of it.

“What in heaven’s name is that?” we cried.

“No work of the imagination. It is actual fact that in winter, both in the last Turko-Russian war and during other campaigns, the road along which the regiments were passing was covered with corpses; one who had not seen it would find it hard to believe. The wheels of the cannons, the tumbrels and other wagons, would crush the wretched men, still living, down into the ruts, where the dead bodies were deliberately left that the road might not be injured; and they were pressed way down under the snow, only the protruding legs and arms showing here and there that the road was a thickly populated graveyard....”

“I understand,” said [I], “that you were blamed for depicting the most horrible things that you saw.”

“The most horrible? No. I found much dramatic material from which I absolutely recoiled, because I was utterly unable to put it on the canvas. For instance, I had the following experience: my brother,[^[1]] who was an aide to General Skobelef, was killed during the third assault on Plevna. The spot where he fell was held by the enemy, so I could not rescue his body. Three months later, when Plevna was in our hands, I went to the place and found it covered with bodies,—more correctly, with skeletons; wherever I looked I found skulls grinning at me, and here and there skeletons still wearing shirts and tattered clothes. They seemed to be pointing with their hands somewhere into the distance. Which of these was my brother? I carefully examined the tatters, the configuration of the skulls, the eye sockets, and I couldn’t stand it; the tears streamed from my eyes, and for a long time I could not control my loud sobbing. Nevertheless, I sat down and made a sketch of this place, which reminded me of Dante’s pictures of hell. I wanted to produce such a picture, with my own figure searching among all those skeletons—impossible! Again, a year later, two years later, when I began on the canvas, the same tears choked me and prevented me from proceeding; and so I have never been able to finish that picture.”

I am warranted in saying that I am repeating Vereshchágin’s own words, for I urged him then and there to incorporate in an article what he had just told me, and send it to me for my monthly periodical. He granted my wish, and in the seventh and eighth issues of Die Waffen nieder for 1893 Vereshchágin published these reminiscences and many others besides.

“In order to get a clearer idea of what war is,” continued Vereshchágin, “I made up my mind to be an eyewitness of the whole thing. I participated in an infantry charge on the enemy, and, as it happened, I led the attack. I have been in a cavalry skirmish and victory, and I have been with the marines on board of a torpedo boat in an attack on great ships. On this last occasion I was punished for my curiosity by a severe wound, which almost sent me to kingdom come, to continue my observations there.”

Well, we know to-day that it was indeed his fate to be dispatched into the next world by a Japanese mine. Almost the first news that startled the world at the time of the Russo-Japanese War was that of the sinking of the ironclad Petropavlovsk, which ran on a mine. Vereshchágin, pencil in hand, was on board, sketching. A shock, a cry of anguish from eight hundred throats, and down into the depths sank ship and crew! Vereshchágin’s intention was to observe and depict the events of the most modern of wars—what would those pictures have turned out to be? Perhaps it would have been as impossible to finish them as it was to reproduce the scene at Plevna. There are horrors which incapacitate the artist’s hand or darken the observer’s mind. The Russo-Japanese War brought the general madness to a head. Vereshchágin’s vibrant artist spirit would perhaps have been the first to become mad if he had ever tried to paint the scenes which have been enacted on barbed wire and in wolf-pits (trous-de-loup).

A few years later—let me here complete my personal recollections of Vereshchágin—I met him a second time. He was giving in Vienna an exhibition of his series of Napoleon pictures. It is said that Emperor William II, on seeing one of these paintings, remarked to him: “With these, dear master, you are battling against war more effectually than all the Peace Congresses in the world.”

Nevertheless, I believe that the artist’s intention was not in the least to engage in that sort of battle. He wanted to be true. He did not hate war at all; he found in it the excitements of the chase.

“I have many times killed men in battle,”—these are his own words,—“and I can say from experience that the excitement, as well as the feeling of satisfaction and contentment, that comes after killing a man is precisely like the sensation which comes when one has brought down uncommonly large game.”

XLII
THE COMMITTEE MEETING AT BRUSSELS AND ITS RESULTS

Committee meeting of the Interparliamentary Union at Brussels · Letter from Senator Trarieux · Address to Gladstone · Address to the French and Italian deputies · Warning as to the duties of the Union · The “inevitable war” between France and Italy · The case of Aigues-Mortes · Settlement through the friends of peace in both countries

It was decided at the Interparliamentary Conference which was held at Bern in the year 1892, that the next one should meet at Christiania; but this intention was frustrated by circumstances. The conflict between Sweden and Norway, which led, twelve years later, to the separation of the two countries, had even then taken such form as to make it clearly inadvisable to select the Norwegian capital as the seat of an international conference.

So the Conference itself fell through. As a substitute for it the members of the bureau, or managing board, of the Interparliamentary Union met at Brussels for a committee meeting. This board had been organized the preceding year at Bern, and consisted of the following members: Dr. Baumbach, member of the Prussian Upper House (represented by Dr. Max Hirsch); Baron von Pirquet, member of the Imperial Parliament (Austria); Don Arturo de Marcoartu, senator (Spain); Trarieux, senator (France); Right Honorable Philip Stanhope, member of the House of Commons (England); Marquis Pandolfi, deputy (Italy); Ullman, president of the Storthing (Norway), represented by Frédéric Bajer, deputy (Denmark); Rahusen, deputy (Netherlands); Urechia, senator (Roumania); Gobat, national councilor, head of the Interparliamentary Bureau (Switzerland).

I got very little information from the newspapers regarding the sessions of this committee. I only knew that Pandolfi wanted to propose the institution of a permanent diplomatic council for the adjustment of national quarrels, and Stanhope the establishment of an international tribunal. So, in order to get more definite information, I wrote to Senator Trarieux and received the following reply:

Senate, Paris, November 3, 1903

Dear Madam:

I was glad to learn from your letter that our Brussels Conference made a good impression in your country, and I thank you sincerely for the personal sympathy that you manifest toward us.

I believe, just as you do, that, although we must regret that we did not meet in a full conference at Christiania, in accordance with the vote at Bern, nevertheless we succeeded in counteracting this disappointment by the important transactions of our bureau.

Although each regular group of the Interparliamentary Union was represented by only one delegate at Brussels, yet we felt strong because of the assurances of confidence which were transmitted to us from thousands of colleagues; and our resolves, if approved, have scarcely less authority than if they had been the result of the votes of our mandators themselves.

Our chief labor was the final determination of the order of business which in the future is to obtain in the deliberations of the Union. I trust they will be accepted by the next Conference.

Above all we endeavored not to step out of the sphere within which we have from the start confined our undertaking. We cherish the conviction that in order to reach our goal we must not dream of being an academy in which all questions can be treated.

We do not desire to be confounded with revolutionary cosmopolitanism; we therefore exclude from our programme everything that might cause the governments to look on us with suspicion. We do not talk of changes in the map of Europe, nor of rectification of boundaries, nor of any attack on the principle of nationality, nor of a solution of those problems of external politics on account of which nations hold themselves ready for war; we take up only the study of those proposals which aim directly at doing away with war and substituting for it the solution of difficulties through a regularly constituted jurisdiction,—that is a ground on which the broad-minded patriots of all countries may meet.

We have not limited ourselves to the preparation of our programme, but have also passed several resolutions, the importance of which you must have recognized if they came to your knowledge.

Thus we voted to send to Mr. Gladstone a congratulatory address regarding the words which he uttered in the English House of Commons on the proposed court of arbitration; moreover, we have sent a petition to our colleagues of the regular groups in the French and Italian parliaments, urging them most strongly to work with all their energies for a rapprochement of their two great countries, which now are unfortunately kept apart through imaginary antagonism.

I am sending you, gracious lady, both of these documents, which, on account of the ideas expressed in them, deserved to be made publicly known throughout the whole world. They are only words, to be sure, but words which exert an influence, because they correspond to the highest endeavors of mankind and contain nothing that arouses criticism even from the most timid of the practical-minded. He who contemns them makes a mistake; contempt and skepticism are out of place when it is a question of penetrating into the secret thoughts of nations, of finding the way to their hearts, and of bringing new truths before the minds of rulers.

Kindly remember me to Baron Suttner, and accept, gracious lady, my most respectful homage.

L. Trarieux, Senator

Enclosed were copies of the addresses sent by the Bureau of the Interparliamentary Union to Gladstone and the French and Italian deputies. I here print the text of these documents, long since buried in the archives and forgotten, because I believe that they afford valuable information for those of my readers who are seeking from my memoirs to acquaint themselves with the history of the peace movement. In the letter to Gladstone can be seen the development of the principle of the court of arbitration, which a few years later found expression in the Hague Tribunal and numerous arbitration treaties. The actual origin goes still further back, to be sure; but the phase here elucidated gave the impulse to its speedy accomplishment, as is shown still more clearly in the report of the Interparliamentary Conference of the following year (1894) at The Hague.

To the Prime Minister, William E. Gladstone

Your Excellency:

We have just read the debates that have been held in the English House of Commons[^[2]] concerning the motion of Mr. William Randal Cremer and Sir John Lubbock relative to a permanent treaty of arbitration between Great Britain and the United States, and we take the greatest possible satisfaction in the following passage from your speech[^[3]]:

“I will only say in conclusion these few words; and although these declarations in favor of arbitration and in the general interests of peace, as well as against vast military establishments, are of great value, there is another method of proceeding which, I think, in our limited sphere, we upon this bench have endeavored to promote, and to which I have attached very considerable value, and that is the promotion of what I may call a Central Tribunal in Europe, a Council of the Great Powers, in which it may be anticipated, or at all events may be favorably conjectured, that the rival selfishnesses, if I may use so barbarous an expression, may neutralize one another, and something like impartial authority may be attained for the settlement of disputes. I am quite convinced that if selfishness were to be sunk and each state were to attain to some tolerable capacity of forming a moderate estimate of its own claims, in such a case the action of a central authority in Europe would be of inestimable value.”

These declarations and resolutions, sir, have interested us greatly, and while we thank you from the bottom of our hearts for the powerful support they give to the ideas of which we have constituted ourselves the official representatives in the eyes of Europe, we take it upon ourselves to emphasize their political importance.

Thanks to you, it is now a certainty that the great states will accept the idea of breaking with the barbaric rule of war and, by means of a systematic organization of international law, of preparing the way for the peaceful solution of conflicts such as might arise between the different nations. It seems to us that your wise and noble words cannot have too wide a publicity, and we shall endeavor to circulate them as far as possible in the states which we have the honor to represent.

But we do not confine ourselves to offering this public homage to you; we are also bold enough to append a respectful request.

Words are forgotten and signify nothing without deeds. It is far more possible for you than for us to give them an effectual sanction by taking the initiative for positive resolutions,—of course, as far as is permitted by diplomatic considerations.

It seems to us that England is in a position to set a great example by making a proposal like that made by the United States of America, and it would delight us if you regarded it as possible, now that the official negotiations with that great power have been begun, to go a step further and offer to negotiate arbitration treaties with such other powers as should be favorably disposed, since you have so openly declared yourself in their favor. In our opinion these would be the best means of assuring peace among the nations.

We believe that no voice would have greater authority than yours in bringing these new ideas to the attention of the governments, and that the result of such a work would be the noblest crown of a glorious career, which perhaps appears more splendid by reason of the services which you have performed in behalf of humanitarian ideas than of those which you have rendered to your own country.

The second address shows very distinctly what views were held during the first year of its existence by the Interparliamentary Board regarding the tasks and duties of the members of the Union. Our contemporaries who follow parliamentary proceedings will, alas, be able to attest that these tasks were not accomplished.

Letter to the French and Italian Deputies

Your Board of the Interparliamentary Conference has just completed its labors, and you will receive its report; but it has thought it expedient, before separating, to call your most earnest attention to the obligation which is incumbent upon you, of working with all your might to dissipate the clouds which of late have been rolling up between your two great countries.

The strained relations between France and Italy could not fail to awaken the apprehensions of the Interparliamentary Board, and, while it does not wish to criticise diplomatic actions, the modification of which is not within its province, it desires, nevertheless, to express the opinion that there exist no grounds for insoluble disagreement, and that cordial relations, which are of such weighty importance for the peace of the world, can be resumed.

If existing alliances—as the contracting parties are continually asserting—are intended only to guarantee the European balance of power, then there can be no reason for nations which are united by the holy bond of common origin to live on a footing of such enmity as might at any moment degenerate into menace. Exaggerated sensitiveness or regrettable misunderstandings are alone responsible for a state of affairs which at all costs must be cleared up. The French and the Italian people are fundamentally inspired by an eager desire for peace. The idea of an armed conflict is repugnant to them both. A fratricidal strife which should bring them face to face on the battlefield would be a real crime and would mean a backward step in civilization. Public opinion, it would seem, might be easily roused against such a misfortune. To enlighten public opinion, to remind it of its real interests,—this it is for which you should exert your influence. Endeavor above all things to make your colleagues in the parliaments to which you belong, share in your anxieties, which doubtless are equal to those borne by us. Conjure the journals of both your countries to be serviceable to you by avoiding in their discussions everything that might embitter the controversies; or, better still, let them use their efforts to calm excited feelings. Make it plain to your fellow-countrymen that such insignificant motives should not be allowed to end in the most horrible of all disasters.

Your board has no doubt, honored colleagues, that this act of intervention would be worthy of you and that it would redound to the glory of the Interparliamentary Conference, and it begs you most earnestly not to let our appeal remain unheard.

The ill feeling between Italy and France referred to in this letter has long since given way to a friendly relationship. But at that time it had reached the point that seemed to give occasion for the certain “inevitable war” always seen by the military circles as everywhere threatening; that is to say, beckoning. Then there is incitement in this direction on the part of the press, there are irritations among the people, and it comes to brawls and fights which keep adding to the bitterness.

In the summer of 1893 a fight had taken place in a workshop in a village of southern France,—Aigues-Mortes,—where Italians were employed. What first gave rise to it was the fact that an Italian workman washed some dirty trousers in a French spring. I find the following observation regarding this circumstance jotted down in my diary:

September 8. The international affairs of Europe rest on such sound and reasonable foundations that such an occasion is all that is required to bring so-called “high politics” into action, and to make historians resigned to the necessity of entering in their annals beside the War of the White and Red Roses the War of the Dirty Trousers.

The incident gave rise to many articles in the papers—the Aigues-Mortes story was headed “Franco-Italian Friction”—and to national demonstrations.

But fortunately there was already a peace movement. The Italian Chamber on the one side, with four hundred members belonging to the Interparliamentary Union; on the other the action of the Frenchmen, Frédéric Passy, Trarieux, and others, managed to dispel the danger. Of course the “war-in-sight-loving” circles were not contented. The following dispatch from Rome was sent to the Figaro on the twenty-second of August:

The Conservatives have agreed to send an address to the King; they blame the Ministry for showing too great weakness in hindering the national demonstrations and putting up with the demonstrations favorable to the French.

So only hostile demonstrations are to be encouraged!

XLIII
FROM DIARY AND PORTFOLIO

Extracts from diary · Caprivi in support of the military bill · Bebel’s interpellation · Invention of a bullet-proof cloth · Settlement of the Bering question · King Alexander to his Servians · Dynamite tragedies in Spain · Visit of the Russian fleet at Toulon · Marcoartu’s letter to me · His letter to Jules Simon · General inquiry of the Paris Figaro as to a gift for the Tsaritsa · My answer to it · Exchange of letters with Émile Zola

When I look back for further recollections of the year 1893, and turn the leaves of my diary to refresh my memory, I discover that I was not interested in incidents of my own life, but rather in the events of contemporary history, and especially in such political phenomena as appertained to questions of peace and war. Among the complicated doings of the world, the features which I followed—and still continue to follow—with passionate interest were the phases of a battle,—the battle which a new idea, a young movement, had begun to wage with deep-rooted existing phenomena. After the manifestations and impressions produced by the powerful “Old,” I listened toward the future and followed with the keenest attention and hopefulness the growth of the as yet invisible and feeble “New,” whereof the great mass of people still had no knowledge. I saw clearly that the tiny plant had started to grow, but I was also well aware how stony the soil was, how harsh were the winds that opposed the development of its life.

How different are the contents of my diary and the pictures in my memory now from those of my youth! Then the center was my own person and all that concerned it,—plans for an artistic career and for marriage, worldly pleasures, domestic cares, and such a lack of understanding and of interest in the events of the day that I scarcely knew what was going on; and a contemporaneous war was noted only after it had broken out, and was disposed of with a line in my day’s records. But since I had become engrossed in the peace question my soul had become a kind of seismograph, which was affected by the slightest political shocks.

Here are a few extracts from my diary of the year 1893:

January 18. Caprivi’s speech in support of the military bill was pure fanfare. It almost signalized the advance of the hostile troops through the Brandenburg Gate, and once more brought into circulation the word “offensive,” which had in a large measure gone out of fashion; for in the last twenty years pleas for armaments have been made only in the name of defense. The Danish Peace Society entered a protest against the insinuation in the Chancellor’s speech in regard to the probable attitude in the next war. As if, indeed, the next war were thus to be announced! We talk about the horrors of a possible war of the future in Europe, but the definite article we do not like to use,—we do not speak of “the next auto-da-fé.”

March 1. The question of peace and arbitration came up yesterday for open debate in the German Reichstag. Bebel inquires whether the authorities are going to join with England and the United States in their endeavors to bring about a solution of international differences by a court of arbitration. Secretary of State von Marschall replies that the United States had, in their brief communication, made no tender in this direction. Nature makes no leaps; still less does official politics. The question came to debate without result, but it was not pushed aside with a smile.

March 20. A man named Dowe is said to have invented a bullet-proof cloth. If the contest between resistance and penetration, as it is carried on between torpedo and armor plate at sea, is to involve the land forces also, there will probably ensue the accelerated ruin of the nations and a reductio ad absurdum of all warfare. Just imagine! a new military bill for providing the millions of the army with bullet-proof wadding,—this voted and furnished at the same time in all countries; and this, if war should break out at this stage of the game, would afford a lovely campaign of unwoundable opponents! Then there would have to be a hasty majority demand for new offensive weapons with bullet-proof-wadding-pierceable bombshells (fired, wherever possible, from mines and balloons, from the frog’s- and bird’s-eye view), then the introduction of armored umbrellas and mine-proof overshoes,—and all this for “the maintenance of Peace.”...

April 4. To-day the arbitrators meet in the building of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Paris, to settle the Bering question. Such an event ought to give the editorial writers of the whole world subject matter for extended observations, and ought to be accompanied by magnificent pageantry.

April 10. Our papers have published the news of the Bering arbitration without comment. On the other hand, the Westminster Gazette writes: “If the intrinsic importance of events and the outward demonstrations were in proportion, the report of the Bering arbitration would ring throughout the world to-day.” And the Daily Telegraph: “The Bering arbitration, as well as that on the Alabama question, affords mankind to-day a majestic spectacle.” An estimate of the importance of the event—typical of the daily press—is afforded by the Paris Figaro, which adds the observation that the seal question, if it is decided by the arbitration commission in a humanitarian manner, will involve a rise in the price of sealskins and persuade our fine ladies to have economical recourse to rabbit skins!

September 8. King Alexander addressed his Servians on his seventeenth birthday; “Heroes! For ten years I have belonged to the army, and as your general in chief (oberster Kriegsherr) I will live for the glory of the Servian arms!” Ah, how delightful to be still a child....

This entry of my diary makes me especially meditative when I compare it with later events,—the slaughter of the king in the year 1903 by Servian “heroes” with Servian weapons.

Beginning of November. Terrible dynamite tragedies have taken place in Spain. Bombs hurled in the auditorium of the Barcelona theater, spreading death and terror (the coming revolution, if righteous social reforms do not obviate it, will be unthinkably terrible through its explosive weapons); and the catastrophe of Santander,—a harbor, a whole harbor, in bright flames; ships blown up, thousands of human beings on the ground, heaps of corpses, a whole railway train shattered, houses transformed into piles of rubbish; the air rendered pestilential by the smell of burning powder and petroleum mills; chimneys flying through space; anchors flung from the bottom of the sea, three hundred meters into the air; the sea beaten and roaring, not by a storm but by the explosion of twenty-five cases of dynamite,—all this gives a foretaste of the deliberate, not accidental, episodes of future naval battles, in which the explosion of mines and the like is already provided for. With the era of explosives and electricity an annihilating power is put into men’s hands which demands that henceforth humanity come to the truth. The beast and the devil, the savage and the child,—all these must be overcome in the human race, if, with such means at hand, they are not to turn the earth into a hell, a madhouse, or a desert waste.

An event of the year 1893 which aroused my liveliest interest was the visit of the Russian fleet to Toulon and the fraternal festivities that were associated with it. I followed with close attention the twofold effect produced by this incident. It gave rise to chauvinistic passions and at the same time to “pacifistic” sentiments. Demonstrations in the one or the other direction took place alternately or broke out simultaneously. On the one hand the Dreibund, or Triple Alliance, on the other the Zweibund, or Double Alliance, were celebrated as guaranties of peace or as organizations for offensive enterprises; between the two lay the conception that they signified the established equipoise.

The official Russian utterances were unwearied in declaring that the visit of the fleet to Toulon was a peaceful demonstration, and in reiterating that absolutely nothing of an aggressive or provocative character could be related to the festivities in France. The French journals were constrained to print these assurances and the Figaro hastened to add: “Of course! Une manifestation essentiellement et exclusivement pacifique”; besides, the French press, and especially the Figaro, would never in the world have upheld any other manifestation! But a few days later the same Figaro proposed that during the Russian festivities “Les Danicheffs” should be performed in the Odéon Theater, “in which piece one passage would be certain to elicit storms of applause,—‘As long as there are Russians and Frenchmen and wild beasts, the Russians and French will stand in alliance against those wild beasts’”!

The whole tone of a large part of the Parisian press during the period preceding the festivities was calculated to exacerbate hatred of Germany. After a time, however, the festivities took the form of peace assurances, and the gala performances in honor of the Russian guests ended with an apotheosis representing peace.

At that time I received the following letter from Senator Marcoartu:

Madrid (Senate), November 13, 1893

Dear Madam:

While in Paris I witnessed the Franco-Russian demonstrations in favor of peace. This once more awoke in me the idea which I promulgated in 1876 in my English work, “Internationalism” (or the ten years’ truce of God). Herewith I send you the letter that I wrote to Jules Simon. It seems to me that the friends of peace, instead of falling asleep under the tent of arbitration, should now start an agitation in behalf of a ten years’ truce. The thing would be feasible and salutary.

Another question of present moment to which I should like to call public attention is the neutralization of straits, isthmuses, and the like. On this point read the bulletin of the Société d’économie politique, Paris, 1892, p. 88, and in Le Matin of October 29, 1893, the interview which an editor of that paper had with me during the Franco-Russian festivities.

In cordial friendship, your very devoted

Marcoartu

Here is the letter to Jules Simon:

Paris, October 29, 1893

Dear Sir:

The congratulatory telegram from his Majesty the Emperor of Russia to the President of the French Republic, in which he declares his desire to coöperate in the confirmation of universal peace, has made such a vivid impression on me that I am addressing you with the following question:

Do you not believe that, in view of Gladstone’s speech in the English House of Commons, on the 16th of June, in which he urges the establishment of a permanent international court of arbitration, and in view of the Emperor’s telegram from Gatchina, the moment has now arrived for a sincere and honorable peace agreement for the whole civilized world? Since a very strong compact between the great empire of the North and the great French Republic for the establishment of universal peace exists; since, further, as you told me, the Emperor of powerful Germany has been outspoken in favor of peace; since the sovereigns and public opinion of Austria and Italy favor peace; since England has no thought of other than commercial conquests; since the whole world is sensible of the necessity of stable peace in order to diminish the colossal burdens which the present war footing, even in time of peace, entails upon the nations; would it not be possible to bring about a sort of truce of God, to last until after the World’s Exposition at Paris in 1900, which is going to demonstrate by its splendor the progress in civilization made by the nineteenth century?

An international agreement would have to bind nations to refrain from every hostile action during those ten years. Every question of war would be postponed; an Areopagus would have to settle all differences not determined diplomatically.

During this new peace era governments would be occupied in developing the resources of their countries, improving the condition of public health, furthering education and works of general utility, settling economic, social, and financial questions, or at least studying how finally to civilize countries still backward, so that by the year 1900 all nations would have the opportunity to show how far they had progressed intellectually and materially, and by how much human prosperity had been increased.

We have lived through twenty years of peace in constant dread of war; now let an attempt be made for once to bring about a ten years’ peace, free from the care and cost of war.[^[4]] Many years ago I wrote:

“In the first third of the century Steam said to the earth, ‘There are no mountains any more’; and the rails have made smooth the surface of the planet.

“In the second third of the century Electricity spoke to the waters: ‘There is no ocean any more’; and the thought-bearing wires encircle the globe.

“To-day I hope and beseech God that in the last third of the century Reason may say to men, ‘There is no war any more.’”[^[5]]

Accept, dear sir, my, etc.

Arturo de Marcoartu

Apropos of the Franco-Russian festivities the Paris Figaro published an inquiry as to what gift should be sent to the Empress of Russia as a memento of the Toulon days. I sent in an answer to the question. Together with many other suggestions, the paper (under date of October 7) printed mine, introducing it with the following words:

We award the prize to the jewel proposed by Baroness Berthe de Suttner,—an olive branch in diamonds, the significance of which she thus explains:

“Pacific demonstration,—such is the character which the Russian government has declared its wish to give to the visit of its squadron to France; therefore the jewel offered to the Tsaritsa to commemorate this event should be an emblem of peace.

“And precisely because the ultra patriots (les chauvins) of all countries will take advantage of the Franco-Russian festivities to attribute to them or see in them a defiant and threatening character, the partisans of peace must take this occasion to emphasize the opposite tendency.

“At the bar of history a peculiar situation will be presented by this year 1893: two groups of allied powers, believing themselves reciprocally threatened, having exhausted all their forces of sacrifice and devotion in preparing an efficacious defense, declare loudly, in the face of Europe, that their dearest desire, their most sacred mission, is to spare our continent the unimaginable horror of a future conflagration. Both of them, while making this solemn proclamation of pacific intentions, are at the same time exhibiting their formidable military forces, their keen swords, their invincible armor. Both sides have demonstrated that their alliances and their friendships are assured, that they are ready to fulfill all their obligations and kindle with every enthusiasm. Thus they find themselves face to face, equal in power, equal in dignity, and—with the exception of a few divergent secondary interests—desirous of the same thing,—peace.

“Unless one or both lie—and what right would one have to make such an accusation?—this situation can have logically no other end than a definitive pacification; consequently overtures might be made from one side or the other, or simultaneously, without the slightest imputation of weakness or of fear.

“Peace offered by the stronger may be humiliating for the weaker; and hitherto, in fact, treaties of peace have been signed only after a war and under the dictation of the conqueror. But in the present conditions, the element of the ‘weaker party’ having disappeared, a new element might make its advent into the history of social evolution, namely, the treaty of peace before—that is to say, in place of—war; in other words, the end of the barbarous age.

“If the days which are in preparation are called to facilitate the greatest triumph which the genius of humanity will have ever won, the jewel which shall commemorate them will be the most beautiful adornment which ever a queen wore. The olive branch inaugurated by the Tsaritsa might in future fêtes be adopted by the wives of all monarchs or presidents who were gathered together; and as the emblem need not invariably be in diamonds, the women of the people might likewise adorn themselves with it, for only the festivals of peace can be at the same time festivals of liberty.”

Here also let one bit of French correspondence be added from the year 1893. In connection with the annual meeting of my Union I desired to get from Émile Zola an expression of his sympathy, and I asked him for it. Here is his reply:

Paris, December 1, 1893

Madame:

Alas! I dream, as do all of you, of disarmament, of universal peace. But, I confess, I fear that it is simply a dream; for I see in all directions threats of war arising, and, unfortunately, I do not believe that the effort of reason and of pity, which humanity ought to make toward exchanging the great fraternal embrace within a brief time (pour échanger à bref délai le grand baiser fraternel), is within the range of possibility.

What I can promise you is to work in my little corner (mon petit coin), with all my powers and with all my heart for the reconciliation of the nations.

Accept, madame, etc.,

Émile Zola

I did not want to leave this letter unanswered. I wrote back:

Château de Harmannsdorf, December 13, 1893

Master:

Accept my sincerest thanks; your letter, containing the precious promise that you will work with all your heart for the reconciliation of the nations, has aroused the enthusiasm of our general assembly.

The fraternal embrace? Universal love?... You are right; humanity has not as yet got to that point. But it does not require mutual love (tendresse mutuelle) to give up killing one another. What exists to-day, and what the peace leagues are combating, is the system of a destructive, organized, legitimized hatred, such as does not in the last analysis exist any longer in human hearts.

There has been talk of late of an international conference, having in view a coalition against the danger of anarchy. Never will the foolishness of the present situation have been more glaring than when these representatives of states which are living together in absolute anarchy—since they acknowledge no superior power—shall deliberate around the same table on methods of protecting themselves against five or six criminal bombs, while at the same time they will go on threatening one another with a hundred thousand legal bombs!

Perhaps the idea might occur to them of saying: To unite in face of a common enemy, we must be reconciled; to defend civilization against barbarism, let us begin by being civilized ourselves; if we desire to protect society from the danger which the action of a madman may inflict upon it, let us, first of all, do away with the thousandfold more terrible danger which the frown of one of the mighty of the earth would be sufficient to let loose upon it; if we wish to punish the lawless, let us recognize a law above ourselves; if we wish to parry the blows of the desperate, let us cease to spend billions in fomenting despair.

But in order that the official delegates may use this reasonable language, they must have back of them the universal acclaim (la clameur universelle) to encourage them, or, better still, to compel them to do so.

The evolution of humanity is not a dream, it is a fact scientifically proved. Its end cannot be the premature destruction toward which it is being precipitated by the present system; its end must be the reign of law in control of force. Arms and ferocity develop in inverse ratio,—the tooth, the big stick, the sword, the musket, the explosive bomb, the electric war engine; and, on the other side, the wild beast, the savage, the warrior, the old soldier, the fighter of to-day (so-called safeguard of peace), the humane man of the future, who, in possession of a power of boundless destructiveness, will refuse to use it.

Whether this future be near or far depends on the work done in les petits coins. Allow me, then, monsieur, not to share in your hélas! but to congratulate myself in the name of all the peace workers to whom you have promised your powerful aid,—a promise which I note with a feeling of deep gratitude.

Accept my, etc.,

Berthe de Suttner

XLIV
VARIOUS INTERESTING LETTERS

Increase of correspondence · Countess Hedwig Pötting · Gift from Duke von Oldenburg · Schloss Erlaa · The duke’s consort · Peace efforts of Prince Peter von Oldenburg thirty years ago · Letter from this prince to Bismarck · Letter from Björnstjerne Björnson

My public activity brought numberless voices from all parts of the world into my house. Signed or anonymous letters; letters from my own country; letters from other parts of Europe and from beyond the sea; letters with explosions of admiration or of coarseness; letters requesting information or making all sorts of propositions for the surest and speediest attainment of our object,—a farmer proposed a special manure system, which, through the creation of good harvests and the consequent enrichment of the people, would unquestionably lead to national peace; manuscripts of from ten to a hundred pages, containing treatises on the problem of war; offers of lifelong zeal in the service of the cause, if only the person might be assured a satisfactory sum in compensation for giving up his profession,—all this sort of thing came to me by mail in ever-increasing proportions.

Of course it was not possible for me to answer them all, and this the more because I had not ceased to carry on my literary labors; at that time I was writing my novel Die Tiefinnersten, and My Own, who assisted me as much as he could in my correspondence and in editing the review, was working at a second sequel to his Kinder des Kaukasus.

Many of the letters were really so interesting that they could not be left unanswered. One day, after the evening meeting of the Peace Society, which had been held under my chairmanship, I got such a beautiful letter, glowing with such genuine enthusiasm, that the desire awoke in me to become acquainted with the writer. The signature was that of one of my own rank, also a canoness, and this very circumstance astonished me. It is not consonant with the nature of the aristocratic women of Austria, particularly of the elder canonesses (Chorschwestern) of the nunneries, to be enthusiastic in behalf of politically revolutionary ideas, and to give spontaneous and frank utterance to such enthusiasm. So I answered the letter by going myself to the writer’s residence, and, as I did not find her at home, I left my card with a few hearty words on it.

The following day she hastened to me, and as a result we formed a cordial friendship. To-day I have no dearer friend than the Countess Hedwig Pötting, and Hedwig has no truer friend than I. We absolutely understood each other. And an equally profound mutual understanding arose between her and my husband. Her views so absolutely coincided with his, that they came to the conclusion they must have been brother and sister in some previous incarnation, and they called each other Siriusbruder and Siriusschwester.

Intimate friendship rarely exists without nicknames, and so I used to be called, not only by Hedwig but also by My Own, not Bertha but Löwos, and I used to call Hedwig die Hex (the witch). That does not sound very friendly, but as it was the pet name which her own idolized mother—a splendid old lady of clear and open mind—called her by, I also adopted it. Die Hex helped me faithfully in my life work; she became one of the officers of the Union; she adapted my novel, Die Waffen nieder, for young people under the title Marthas Tagebuch (“Martha’s Diary”); she gave me much useful counsel; and in many trying hours was a support and comfort to me.

“Yesterday at Erlaa received a very valuable gift”; this entry I find in my diary of May, 1894. Erlaa is the name of a castle in the vicinity of Vienna, occupied by Duke Elimar von Oldenburg and his family. There we were often invited to dinner. The castle is surrounded by a splendid park, and I remember how, during that May time, the intoxicating perfume of elder blossoms poured in at the open terrace doors, and what a sweet tumult thousands of songsters made in the shrubbery. The duke’s consort—she was called duchess from courtesy, but, inasmuch as she was morganatically married, she had only the baronial title—was a striking personage of tall, overslender, willowy figure. Being very musical, she delighted in attracting artists into her house, and she herself, as well as the duke, used to spend many evenings at the piano and melodeon, or with the violin and cello. The duchess—since every one gave her that title, I will call her so too—was not particularly well disposed to me. I discovered that afterwards. Coming from a sternly puritanic family, she found my free religious views rather repugnant to her. I have letters from her in which she attempted to convert me to stricter articles of faith; but I learned through remarks that she made to others that she accused me of “materialism,” that my novel Die Tiefinnersten had particularly displeased her, because in it—according to her idea—I ridiculed everything ideal, profound, or sacred. Now the novel ridicules only the stilted and mystical style of those who are always making use of the words “profound” and “inmost,” when they cannot find anything clear to say.

The circumstances connected with the gift mentioned in my diary were these: in the course of a conversation at table, when the subject of peace was mooted, the duke said to me: “I am not the first one of my family, baroness, to be interested in your cause. My father’s brother, Prince Peter von Oldenburg, worked in his day for the abolition of war. Although on his mother’s side he was grandson of the Emperor Paul, and although he held the rank of a general in the Russian infantry and was at the head of the Stavodub regiment of dragoons, he was a militant friend of peace. He did not regard the matter simply as an ideal and as a dream to be realized in centuries to come, but worked strenuously to bring it about; he traveled from court to court, laid his ideas before the Queen of England and the King of Prussia; yet at that time, thirty years ago, his efforts remained fruitless....”

“What!” I exclaimed; “and nobody heard anything about it!”

“My uncle kept on resolutely with his efforts,” continued the duke. “I possess the draft of a letter addressed to Bismarck in 1873, in which he set forth his ideas,—also without result.”

“Oh, if I might see that letter!”

“It has never been published, but you shall have a copy of it.”

With the heartiest thanks I accepted the gift. Here is the letter written to the aged Chancellor:

Your Serene Highness:

Fearing that I may have no opportunity for a serious conversation with you during your busy sojourn in St. Petersburg, I am bold enough to present in writing what, by word of mouth, would probably be less explicit and evident.

My letters to your gracious sovereign, as well as my application to M. Thiers and the steps that I have taken in trying to induce my imperial master to assure the peace of Europe forever, are well known to your Highness. With the same object in view I applied to the ex-Emperor Napoleon in the year 1863, and I have reason to believe that during and after Sedan he must have regretted having acted in opposition to my views and those of so many other right-thinking men.

Who knows better than your Serene Highness the situation of Europe and Germany? Is it satisfactory or not? The answer to this question I leave to the great statesman whose name will be immortal in the history of the world.

Surely every right-thinking person was rejoiced at the meeting of the three emperors in Berlin. The visit of your Emperor at St. Petersburg strengthens the opinion that a guaranty for peace is to be found in the friendship of two powerful imperial states existing side by side. But how contradictory to the peace idea are the enormous military establishments of all states! Even Russia is now introducing the Prussian system of universal conscription, and, although the Prussians regard this as a guaranty of peace, yet that increase of the army and of the military budget is a heavy burden for Russia, diminishing its resources for prosperity.

During my visit with M. Thiers in Versailles last year he said to me:

“Que voulez-vous que nous fassions? Nous sommes les faibles, les vaincus, mais du moment qu’il y aura des propositions de désarmement de la part des vainqueurs, nous sommes prêts à entrer en négociations.”[^[6]]

I reported this conversation to my emperor and wrote as follows to yours:

“A solemnly serious, fateful moment has come. In the scales of Destiny the mighty word of the German Emperor is of heavy weight. The history of the world is the tribunal of the world (Die Weltgeschichte ist das Weltgericht). William the Victorious is chosen by the God of battles to bear the immortal name of the Blessed, as founder of peace.”

This historical mission he shall and must fulfill: God has aided him to make the volcanic center of revolutions harmless for a long time to come, and, we hope, forever. Now it must be his task to extirpate en principe the root of evil, the highest potency of sin,—war; for never will a permanent prosperity obtain on earth as long as governments (1) act contrary to Christianity; (2) stand in the way of true civilization.

What, according to the notions of the law, is the essential characteristic of the civis? Obedience to the laws. But war is a disorganization of legal conditions; therefore it is the renunciation of civilization. In the present circumstances civilization is only an illusion, consisting purely of intelligence for material objects, such as railways, telegraphs, and the invention of instruments of annihilation.

After the tremendous successes of the German arms in the last war the question arises, with whom and for what object shall any other war be waged? Prussia’s position in Germany and vis-à-vis to Austria and Denmark is clear; Italy united; France harmless and on good terms with Russia,—all this is a guaranty of peace.

What problem, then, is before us now? That of combating revolutionary, communistic, democratic ideas, that are opposed to religion, the monarchical principle, and the social foundation of the State.[^[7]] Subversive ideas, however, are not overcome by bayonets, but by means of wise ideas and regulations, which must proceed only from those who reign by the grace of God and are chosen by Providence to establish the happiness of nations.

The peace idea would be the very best means of meeting the French idea of revenge. Although the French are not to be relied on as a nation, I am persuaded that the notion of a perpetual peace would nevertheless appear plausible to the propertied and intelligent mass of the population, even if the government conducted by M. Thiers should be supplanted by another; for the motto of the French is gagner pour jouir, and I believe that the mass of the population would prefer jouissance rather than gloire.

Even in Prussia the multitudinous lawsuits against persons who try to get rid of compulsory service show how many feel that it is a burden; and God forbid that the alleviation should ever proceed from below instead of from above.

The latest history of Russia is an edifying example of what the will of a noble, humane, and magnanimous monarch can do to benefit his people. So when two monarchs, related by race and friendship, clasp hands, may God aid them to make their union a blessing for their countries and for suffering mankind.

In my memorial to your emperor I said, “Only a fool or a knave can think of a state without an armed force”; and in my letter to M. Thiers I wrote, abolir la force armée serait une idée criminelle et insensée.

One cannot express one’s self more energetically on this point. In Prussia, to abolish a system to which it owes its historical position would be as imbecile as for Russia to think of holding the Poles in control and of protecting the tremendous frontier from the Black Sea to the Pacific Ocean against savage tribes, without an army. The question, therefore, is simply this: What numerical extension should one give to the principle of universal compulsory service, and in what proportion should the military budget stand to the other expenditures of the State?

In my humble opinion it should be thus regulated:

1. En principe abolish war between civilized nations and let the governments guarantee to each other the possession of their respective territories.

2. Settle questions at issue by an international commission of arbitration, after the example of England and America.

3. Determine the strength of armaments (die Stärke der bewaffneten Macht) by an international convention.

Even should the abolition of war be relegated by many to the domain of fairy tales, I nevertheless have the courage to believe that therein lies the only means of saving the Church, the monarchical principle, and society, and of curing the State of the cancerous evil which at the present time is preventing its perfection; and, on the other hand, through the reduction of the war budget, of procuring for the State the following means for its internal development and prosperity: (1) reduction of taxes; (2) improvement in education and promotion of science and art; (3) increase in salaries, especially of teachers and the clergy; (4) improvement in the condition of the laboring classes; (5) provision for beneficent objects.

The accomplishment of such lofty, purely Christian, and humane ideas, proceeding directly from two such mighty monarchs, would be the most glorious victory over the principle of evil; a new era of blessing would begin; one cry of jubilation would ring through the universe and find a response among the angels of heaven. If God is on my side, who can be against me, and what worldly power could resist those who would act in the name of the Lord?

This is the humble opinion of a man growing old, heavily tried by fate, one who, not fearing the opinions of the world or its criticism, looking to God and eternity, merely following the voice of his conscience, seeks nothing else on this earth than a quiet grave beside his dear ones who have gone before.

Dixi et salvavi animam meam.

With the highest consideration, I have the honor of being

Your Serene Highness’s most devoted servant

Peter, Prinz von Oldenburg

St. Petersburg, April 15 (27), 1873

What answer Bismarck gave, or whether he replied at all, Duke Elimar did not know.

There is surely nothing more interesting than such old authentic letters. They show how ideas later become facts, and how events which afterwards develop were, long before, thoughts in men’s minds. Here I find also among my correspondence the following letter from Björnson. In view of the disunion of the Scandinavian countries, which eventuated ten years later, it assumes a quite especial significance:

Schwaz, Tirol, July 20, 1894

My dear Comrade:

—But be consoled; when Norway becomes mistress of her external affairs (this is the object of the struggle) we shall go immediately to Russia and demand a permanent court of arbitration for all disagreements. If that succeeds,—and why should it not?—we will proceed to all other matters. As soon as our relationship to Sweden permits of it, we shall transform our army into an internal police force.

One example is stronger than a thousand apostles! The great majority of the Norwegians have wholly lost belief in the beneficence of armaments and are ready to set the example.

At the same time Sweden is arming on a scale quite extraordinary for a people not rich. The general feeling in Sweden—so I am told—threatens Norway with war, merely because Norway desires to have charge of its own affairs.

Sweden might educate us by means of war to be good comrades in arms! It would be the first time in history that the two great opposites had stood in such blunt opposition,—on the one side a permanent court of arbitration for all eventual quarrels, and no army any more; on the other side, war to compel us to keep a larger army and to enter a firmer military alliance.

But I trust that the struggle will end peaceably; I trust that the general feeling in Norway in favor of the principle of “arbitration instead of war” is also making progress in Sweden. In fact, already the spirit of freedom in Norway—to the great annoyance of the highly conservative court of the Swedish nobility and other great lords who are powerful there—has spread widely in Sweden.

Accept my heartiest congratulations and gratitude, my dear Baroness; were it not so far, I would come and make you a visit!

Your most devoted

Björnstjerne Björnson

XLV
PEACE CONGRESS IN ANTWERP AND INTERPARLIAMENTARY CONFERENCE AT THE HAGUE

Preparation for the Congress by the Belgian government · Houzeau de Lehaye · A reminiscence of the battlefield of Sedan · Concerning free trade · Audience with King Leopold · Invitation to the Interparliamentary Conference · Reception the evening before · Pithy sentences from Rahusen’s address · Opening · “No other cause in the whole world....” · Second day of deliberation · Stanhope · Gladstone’s proposal · Debate over the tribunal plan · Dr. Hirsch puts on the brake · Rejoinder by Frédéric Passy and Houzeau · Randal Cremer · Concluding festivities in Scheveningen

My memory retains as the most important events of the year 1894 our participation in the Sixth Peace Congress at Antwerp and in the Interparliamentary Conference which followed immediately at The Hague. Another festal journey into unfamiliar countries, and another stage of progress in the triumphant march of an Idea!

Before the assembling of the Congress the Belgian Minister of State, Le Bruyn, laid before King Leopold a report setting forth the remarkable growth of the movement and adducing as a proof of it the fact that in countries like Austria and Germany, which hitherto had held aloof from the cause, great peace societies had sprung into existence and found fruitful soil. The king’s reply to this report was the establishment of a committee whose duty it should be to forward the labors of the Peace Congress that was to meet at Antwerp. The committee, composed of thirty members, included the most distinguished names in Belgium, in large part officials connected with the government.

The opening session took place on the twentieth of August, in the great hall of the Athenæum. We had arrived the day before, and had looked about a little in the commercial metropolis of Belgium, and had spent the evening in pleasant intercourse with several of our friends who had journeyed thither from all parts of the world.

Our new president, Houzeau de Lehaye, was in the number,—a lively little man, full of wit and possessing the gift of fascinating eloquence. As chairman he conducted the proceedings with tact and firmness, and whenever in succeeding Congresses he took part in the debates, as he was particularly apt to do if any obstacles had to be avoided, one could always depend on his tact.

“Twenty-four years ago,” Houzeau told us that first day, “I visited the battlefield of Sedan. I have the impression of it still before me,—those corpses, those temporary graves, those flocks of ravens, the troops of maddened horses tearing over the plain, the wounded and dying lying in their gore, the teeth clinched in the agony of tetanus, the columns of prisoners of war, the heaps of discarded weapons, and in the midst of a grass plat the brass instruments of a military band surprised by the enemy in the climax of the saber song from ‘The Grand Duchess of Gerolstein.’ And I saw white sheets of letter paper, covered with the simple messages of love of mothers and sweethearts, flying round in the autumn wind until they fell into lakes of blood; and the horrible vision of countless bones and bleeding flesh all trodden down into the mire.... The peasants had fled from their villages across the neighboring boundary, and were then returning slowly to find misery and ruin, to which they would later have to succumb; and this,” he added, as he concluded his reminiscences with restrained passion, “is this to be the sum of civilization?”

Houzeau de Lehaye is a decided advocate of free trade. In his opening address, in which he depicted the errors and prejudices lying at the foundation of any defense of the institution of war, he said:

There is still another error which does not indeed involve a brutal battle of saber and cannon, but nevertheless is not much less calamitous. In spite of all the counter-evidence of the political economists, in spite of repeated results based on experience, yet how widespread is the prejudice that a nation becomes poor when the prosperity of neighboring peoples makes too rapid advances. And in order to preserve an imaginary equilibrium they hasten to have recourse to a protective tariff. And this war of the tariffs is not less destructive than the other. By a righteous retribution this weapon chiefly wounds those that wield it. And all these errors have their foundation in the false notion of the source of wealth and prosperity. It is worth while to note that there is only one source,—labor!

One would think that such simple truths would not require to be stated at this late day, for it is clear enough that wealth can be increased only from the creation of material things and not through mere change of place,—from Peter’s pocket into Paul’s; a transaction which, in addition, often means the destruction of the values shuffled this way and that. But the simpler, the more self-evident a truth is, the more it is wrapped up in the veils and fogs of old prejudices and current phraseology, and therefore it does much good to hear it once again spoken out so frankly and clearly.

This time there was a Portuguese at the Congress,—Magelhaes Lima, the publisher of the radical-liberal newspaper O Seculo. From America came Dr. Trueblood, who has never missed any of the European Peace Congresses.

I remember a lovely trip on the Schelde in a steamship put at our service by the government. Then a trip was made to Brussels between two sessions. A deputation of five members of the Congress, conducted by Houzeau, was received in audience by King Leopold. Frédéric Passy, Count Bothmer from Wiesbaden, my husband, and I made up the deputation. We drove from the railway station to the palace. In the audience chamber the king came to meet us,—recognizable instantly even at a distance by his long, square white beard,—and Houzeau presented the rest of us. I no longer recollect anything that was said; probably it was of small consequence. I only know that the king seemed to be on very jovial terms with Houzeau de Lehaye, for he slapped him several times laughingly on the shoulder. I remember one sentence that King Leopold said to us:

“The sovereign of a perpetually neutral state, like Belgium, must naturally feel interested in the question of international pacification. But of course,” he added,—and thereby all that he had said before was “of course” taken back,—“to protect this neutrality we must be armed.”

“What we are working for in our circles, your Majesty,” one of us replied, “is that the security of treaties should rest on law and honor and not on the power of arms.”

Houzeau did not wait to be dismissed, but himself gave the signal for departure. “The train does not wait—it knows no etiquette,” said he. There was another little tape d’amitié on our president’s shoulder: “You care mighty little for etiquette yourself, my dear Houzeau....”

Immediately after the Antwerp Congress the Interparliamentary Conference was opened. This year, having been invited by the Netherlands government, it met at The Hague. As we were not Parliamentarians we had no title to be present, but Minister van Houzeau had sent me the following letter under date of May 23:

Dear Baroness:

On account of my appointment as Minister I have left the committee on organization of the Interparliamentary Conference; yet I hope, as representative of the government, to give to the Conference the address of welcome in September. The limited space in the hall where the meetings are to be held will permit only a small number of guests and representatives of the press to be present; nevertheless the committee will doubtless assure so prominent an advocate of the peace cause a place among the very first. It will delight me to greet you as well as your husband here in September, and also our friend Pirquet and, if possible, others from your country.

Our hospitable city, with its splendid beach, will permit visitors to combine the useful with the agreeable; and the assured visit of many prominent men will, it is to be hoped, permit the Conference, in which the presidents of both our chambers will take part, to accomplish something beneficial in regard to the practical promotion of international arbitration.

With friendly greeting, your devoted

S. van Houzeau

Thus the opportunity was afforded us of being present during the notable debates of that national representative Conference which was the precursor—and, one may say the cause—of the later Conference of nations at The Hague.

On the day of the opening session, the third of September, there was a reception in the rotunda of the Zoölogical Garden. Here the participants and the guests met together. The president of the Conference, Rahusen, made an address to the foreign Parliamentarians, from which I took down in my notebook the following sentences:

If we pass beyond the boundaries of our country, do we imagine ourselves in a hostile land? Have you had any such experience in coming here? I believe that I am justified in saying No.

... It is a phenomenon of our time that we find a solidarity among the nations such as did not formerly exist.

... I know well that there are still men who ridicule such ideas; meantime let us rejoice that no one condemns them.

... The morning glow of international righteousness indicates the setting of the old war sun. If the last rays of this sun—which, decrepit with age, has already lost its blaze and its warmth—shall once be wholly extinguished,[^[8]] then we, or those who come after us, shall be filled with jubilant joy, and shall be astonished that the civilized world could ever have called in brute force as an arbiter between nations no longer inimical to each other but bound together by so many common interests.

After this official part of the evening the company sauntered out into the open air, where the friends, some promenading, some taking places at tables about the rotunda, met and remained chatting till midnight.

At ten o’clock the next morning the formal opening took place in the assembly hall of the First Chamber of the States-General, a hall not very large but as high as a house and having its ceiling decorated with splendid paintings. I had a place in the gallery and enjoyed the magnificent spectacle, as the representatives of fourteen different parliaments took their seats one after another at the green-covered tables, while the members of the government who were to greet the Conference took places on the president’s dais. Minister van Houten, of the Interior Department, made the first address:

“No other cause in the whole world,” said he, “equals in magnitude that which is to be advocated here.”

I must delay a moment over this statement. It expresses what at that time formed (and forms equally to-day) the substratum of my feelings, thoughts, and endeavors, and likewise explains why in this second portion of my memoirs the phases of the peace movement take up so much space.

“No other cause in the whole world equals this in magnitude,”—I am not expressing a personal opinion, I am quoting; this is a conviction so deeply and religiously instilled into my mind (this is usually called a vocation!) that I cannot confess it often and loudly enough. Even if I knew that nine tenths of the cultured world still disregarded and ignored the movement, and one of these nine tenths went so far as to be hostile to it,—that is of no consequence; I appeal to the future. The twentieth century will not end without having seen human society shake off, as a legal institution, the greatest of all scourges,—war.

In writing my diary I am accustomed, when I am making note of situations which are threatening or promising, to mark them with an asterisk, then to turn over twenty or thirty blank pages and write, “Well, how has it resulted? See p. —.” Then when, in the course of my entries, I come quite unexpectedly on this question, I can answer it. And so here I ask some much, much later reader, who perchance has fished this book out from some second-hand dealer’s dust-covered bookshelf, “Well, how has it resulted? Was I right?” Then he may write on the margin the answer,—I see the gloss already before me,—“Yes, thank God!” (19??).

And now, back to The Hague, 1894. The proceedings of the first day resulted in nothing noteworthy. The second made up for it! Whoever reads the report of that day’s proceedings from a critically historical point of view can detect in it the embryo of the later Hague Tribunal, which, in turn, is at present only the embryo of what is yet to be.

Goals attained? The believer in evolution does not require them for his assurance; the line which shows the direction taken is enough.

I took my seat in the gallery in the greatest excitement, as at the theater when an interesting star performance is promised by the programme. The order of the day ran: “Preliminary Plan for the Organization of an International Tribunal of Arbitration,” presented by Stanhope.

A new man,—the Right Honorable Philip James Stanhope, Lord Chesterfield’s younger brother and intimate friend of the “grand old man,” Gladstone. At Gladstone’s direct instance Stanhope had come to the Conference in order to put before it the outcome of June 16, 1893, when in the English House of Commons Cremer’s motion was carried, and the Premier, in supporting it, appended the dictum that arbitration treaties were not the last word in assuring the peace of the world; a permanent central tribunal, a higher council of the powers, must be established.

Stanhope began his speech amid the breathless attention of the assembly. He speaks in the purest French, almost without accent. And in spite of all his unruffled clarity he speaks with such fire that he is frequently interrupted with shouts of applause. After he had explained Gladstone’s proposal he proceeded:

It is our duty now to bring this demand courageously before the governments.

Everything which up to the present time appertains to so-called international law has been established without precise principles, and rests on accidents, on precedents, on the arbitrary decisions of princes. Consequently, international law has made the least progress of all sciences, and presents a contradictory mass of ambiguous waste paper (de paperasses vagues).

Two great needs stand before the civilized nations,—an international tribunal, and a code corresponding to the modern spirit and elastic enough to fit new progress. This would insure the triumph of culture and do away with the criminal recourse to deadly encounters.

As things are to-day, fresh military loans are demanded in every parliament, and we are lashed by the press until we give our consent.[^[9]] It would be otherwise if we could reply: “The dangers against which the armaments demanded are to protect us would be obviated by the tribunal which we desire.” Therefore a project ought to be elaborated which we might lay before the governments.

Here Stanhope developed a few points which were to be established as the basis of the organization, and he concluded with these words:

If next year we approach the governments with such a plan, and if our action were in unison, the future would give us the victory; at all events, the moral victory would be assured to us in having done our whole duty.

Then came a debate. The German deputy, Dr. Hirsch,—from the beginning the Germans have performed the function of the brake in the Peace Conferences,—speaks against Stanhope’s proposition, nevertheless recognizing the noble ideas so eloquently presented:

It is essential that the members of the Conference should pass only such resolutions as are comprehensible and practicable, and as may be presented to the parliaments with some probability of their being accepted; now Herr von Caprivi would certainly never take into consideration the project of an international tribunal. We ought to avoid also inviting the curse of absurdity through plans of that kind; for opponents are only too much inclined to ridicule the members of the Conference as dreamers.

Houzeau de Lehaye springs from his seat like a jack-in-the-box:

In view of such great ideas [he shouts] as those that have just been developed, in view of the establishment of a cause by such men as Stanhope and Gladstone, the word “absurd” should never be uttered again! [Applause.] I second the motion.

Now the revered Passy arises:

I should like to enter my protest against a second word which my honored friend, Dr. Hirsch, has used,—the word “never.” No great advancement, no innovation, has ever been carried through, but that the prediction has been made at the beginning that it could never be done. For example, that parliamentarians from all nations should meet to discuss the peace of the world, that they should do this in the assembly hall of the Upper House of a monarchical state,—if the question had been propounded five years ago, When will all this happen? who would not have answered, “Never!”

And, in fact,—Passy accidentally hit upon the very figure,—five years later, on the 29th of July, 1899, the International Tribunal was established in the very city where the plan for such a tribunal, proposed by Gladstone, was laid on the table. Dr. Hirsch’s “never” did not last very long! To be sure, this tribunal does not as yet possess a mandatory character; the protesters who were active in objecting to the establishment of the tribunal at all saw to it that it should not have this character. And all who cling to the institution of war are also persuaded that this shall never be.

Many other speakers supported the motion, and at last it was adopted with acclamation.

I felt deeply moved; so did My Own, who sat beside me; we exchanged a silent pressure of the hand.

The members were then chosen who should formulate the plan which was to be laid before the next year’s Conference.

This plan,—I anticipate events in order to show that that session was really historical,—this plan was presented to the Conference of 1895, at Brussels, was accepted and sent to all the governments, and assuredly contributed to the calling of the Hague Conference in 1898, and served as a basis for the establishment of the Permanent Court of Arbitration and its regulations.

That session brought one other sensation. After Stanhope’s motion was adopted, Randal Cremer mounted the platform. He was greeted with loud applause. He, together with Frédéric Passy, had been the inaugurator of the Interparliamentary Conferences. He had secured the signatures for the Anglo-American arbitration treaty, first in his own country and then, after crossing the ocean, in the United States; and it was due to him that the motion on that famous sixteenth of June, 1893, was adopted with Gladstone’s aid. His mode of speaking is simple and unadorned; he betrays clearly the former laboring man.

After the session he came up to us in the corridor and informed us that before leaving home he talked with Lord Rosebery; that he had not been permitted to repeat at the Conference what the Premier had said to him, but it had been of the most encouraging character. His feeling of confidence communicated itself to us.

The concluding banquet took place in the assembly room at Scheveningen. The orchestra played all the national hymns in succession. I sat between Rahusen and Houzeau. Stanhope delivered an extraordinarily keen and witty speech, the venerable Passy one full of eloquence and fire. I also had to speak. Fireworks were set off on the esplanade. The final apotheosis formed the words Vive la Paix, glowing in fiery letters, over which beamed a genius with a branch of palms.

What thoughts were in the minds of the guests of the watering-place as they promenaded by and stared at us? Probably none, and they were not so very far wrong; for what is left after the words have ceased, the toasts have been pledged, and the fireworks have been sent off? Nothing! From far down in the depths must the energies come through which epochs are changed....

XLVI
VARIOUS RECOLLECTIONS

In Harmannsdorf again · My husband writes Sie wollen nicht · Max Nordau’s opinion of it · My labors and correspondence · Rear Admiral Réveillère · Dolmens and menhirs · From the patriot of Brittany to the patriot of humanity · Réveillère’s views about social economy, the lot of the masses, professional politicians, etc. · A fine comparison · Deaths of Prince Achille Murat, Duke von Oldenburg, and Ruggero Bonghi

After our return from Holland to our beloved Harmannsdorf we resumed our quiet, happy, laborious life. My Own began writing his two-volume novel entitled Sie wollen nicht, which was to be his ripest work. Max Nordau wrote to him regarding it:

Forgive me for delaying until to-day to thank you for your highly interesting novel Sie wollen nicht. It takes a long time for me to find opportunity, in my over-busy life, to read 730 pages of prose, no matter how very easy and agreeable may be its style, unless it happens to fit in directly with my line of work.

What I think of your character I should not be permitted to tell you. I know that men of real character find any praise of their characteristics disagreeable. At any rate I may say in brief that I admire the German writer who has the courage to-day to create the figures of a Gutfeld, Zinzler, and Kölble. Artistically your novel stands high. Perhaps there are too many threads interwoven, and the web is, perhaps, not drawn tight enough. That the main drama is not introduced until the last chapters, with the appearance of Palkowski, is no advantage from the standpoint of composition; but all that is a trifle compared to the great advantage of its wealth of motives and the vital energy of the complicated multitude of personages. Old Jörgen alone would suffice to make your novel ever fresh in the reader’s memory.

At that time I was writing Vor dem Gewitter. The editorial work on my monthly periodical likewise gave me abundant occupation, and my correspondence even more. I wrote regularly to Alfred Nobel in order to keep him informed as to the development of the peace cause. I constantly had long, stimulating letters from Carneri as well as from Rudolf Hoyos, Friedrich Bodenstedt, Spielhagen, Karl von Scherzer, M. G. Conrad, and others. I found a new, and to me personally unknown, correspondent in an old French naval officer, Rear Admiral Réveillère. I cannot now remember whether he wrote to me first or I to him. Whether or no, our correspondence was based on similarity of ideas and a mutual knowledge of each other’s writings. The first time I ever heard of Réveillère was at the banquet of the Interparliamentary Conference of 1894, at Scheveningen, when Frédéric Passy, in proposing a toast to the sea which was roaring beyond the doors of the hall, said he was quoting the words of his friend Réveillère.

Born in 1828, in Brittany, he had long followed the sea, and now was living in retirement in Brest, his native city, known to fame as a savant and a writer. He occupied his leisure time in writing books and articles. He had participated in many naval battles and many battles of ideas. The list of the titles of his books shows to how many countries he had traveled in the performance of his duties, and also how manifold were the regions which he had explored as a poet and thinker: “Gaul and the Gauls,” “The Enigma of Nature,” “Across the Unknown,” “The Voices of the Rocks,” “Journey Around the World,” “Seeds and Embryos,” “Against Storm and Flood,” “The Three Promontories,” “Letters of a Mariner,” “Tales and Stories,” “The Indian Seas,” “The Chinese Seas,” “The Conquest of the Ocean,” “The Search for the Ideal”; still later came “United Europe” (Paris, Berger Levraut, 1896), “Guardianship and Anarchy” (Ibid., 1896), “Extension, Expansion” (Ibid., 1898).

He wrote me once how it happened that he, the son of conservative Brittany, grown gray in the naval service, had joined the pacifists:

Often we are inspired by two ideas which have no apparent connection, and it sometimes takes years before the bond that connects them is discovered. It has cost me much time and thought to explain the connection between the two ruling passions which possess me and which had seemed to me to have no relationship with each other,—a deep-seated enthusiasm for the federation of Europe, and an instinctive cult for dolmens and menhirs.

From my earliest childhood I have been fascinated by the riddle that is presented in stone on all sides in my Breton homeland; and ever since my childhood I have been in love with the beautiful dream of a European federation,—a dream which is bound to come true in spite of the prejudices of statesmen and the prepossessions of crowned heads. The great work of the European alliance must begin with the rapprochement of those nations whose customs and ideas have the closest analogy. The nations living along the Atlantic coast have been the only ones to assimilate the principles of the French Revolution: I mean the following countries: Scandinavia, Holland, Belgium, France, Portugal, and ancient Helvetia, the oldest of the European republics. England had, long since, already passed through her revolution.

Later my archæological studies taught me that this was the very region of the dolmens. All these nations had common ancestors,—the Megalithians; from the North Cape as far as Tangiers the same race occupied the coast; there were the same burial rites, always based on the same articles of faith; and the result was that to me the dolmens and menhirs came to stand as the symbols of a Western federation.

And another time:

The accident of birth made me first of all a Breton patriot. When I emerged from the narrow egoism of childhood, my first love was directed to Brittany. When the development of my intellect permitted me to realize the solidarity of my little homeland with the French fatherland, I became a French patriot. Later I learned from history that all the nations on this side of the Rhine once formed a glorious Federation; then I became a Gallic patriot. Still later study of the Megalithic monuments revealed to me a new connection,—that with the Megalithic race. As logic continued its work, I became a European patriot; finally, a patriot of humanity. In our day national love is an imbecile love unless it is illuminated by the love for mankind.

I have read only the three last-named works of the admiral; but he regularly sent me the articles that he published in the journal La Dépêche, in which he always took a consistent attitude—that of “illuminating” love for mankind—toward all the questions of the day; not, however, in the least in a visionary way, nor with any smack of mysticism, which so constantly stirs the spiritual lives of poetically inclined seafarers. He based his political ideals on actual and positive considerations, drawn particularly from the domain of national economy. Thus he wrote:

In order to meet the industrial rivalry of the United States of America and the yellow races, it would be desirable—in the interest of France and Germany—to see a customs union formed, embracing Germany, Belgium, Holland, and France, and including, at the same time, the colonies of these countries. It really seems almost impossible at the present time to swim against the stream of protective tariffs, and yet every nation is conscious of the necessity of extending its market. If there is opposition to this extension on European soil, why is not an effort made to gain it through a colonial union,—a union by means of which the federated countries might insure to their citizens, their vessels, and their products the same rights and privileges in all the colonies?

With regard to the lot of the masses, which so greatly needs to be improved, Réveillère says that this amelioration depends on the general production of useful articles. As long as the masses are wasting their energies in unproductive labors there is no alleviation possible for them, ... and at the present time the nations are wearing themselves out in unproductive and destructive labor. There is no halfway measure; either international anarchy (that is to say, the lack of a code of laws regulating the intercourse of nations), with poverty, or federation, with wealth.

My Breton friend was inclined not to mince words in speaking of the politicians: “Steam has changed everything in this world except the routine of our statesmen!” And in the following letter:

Engineers and scholars are all the time at work filling up the graves which the professionals in statecraft are digging; the engineers are expending all their energies in increasing the productivity of labor, the politicians are doing everything they possibly can to make it sterile.

Many persons are of the opinion that the end sought is too broad and distant, and the initiation of it is beset with too great difficulties, to be willing to attempt the regulation of a pacific mutual relationship among the European states; especially at the present time, when almost every state has to endure so much trouble and disturbance arising from the violent national and social battles which are raging within its own borders. An answer to this objection is afforded by the following passage from one of Réveillère’s books (“Extension, Expansion,” p. 23):

When a physician has to treat a case of consumption, his first care is to prevent his patient from breathing poisoned air. If he has to perform an operation, he sees to it that the room in which the operation is to take place is purified of every contagious germ. Exactly the same principle holds with regard to national diseases. No state can think of curing its internal ills before the European room is disinfected. Certainly it is the duty of every nation to do everything possible to modify the ills of its own people; but to claim that serious internal reforms can be carried out without having first secured European federation is just like caring for wounded men in a hall filled with microbes.

I kept up a correspondence with Admiral Réveillère for a long time. Of late years our letters fell off in frequency. A short time ago—in March, 1908—he died. Ah, when we have grown old, how often we have to report of our friends that they are no more! In childhood life is like a nursery; in youth, like a garden; in old age, like a cemetery.

Tidings of a death which affected us painfully—I am now telling of what happened in the year 1895—came to us suddenly from the Caucasus,—Prince Achille Murat had shot himself. Was it suicide or an accident? I never learned the exact truth. It happened in Zugdidi, in the villa which My Own had built for the Murats. Princess Salomé, who was sitting in the next room, heard the report of a shot in her husband’s room. She hastened in and found the unfortunate man fallen back in an easy-chair, with a pistol between his legs, the barrel pointing up in the air. Had he been cleaning the weapon carelessly, or was it weariness of life? As I said, I do not know.

And still another loss: On the 17th of October, 1895, Duke Elimar von Oldenburg departed this life, in his fifty-second year, at his castle of Erlaa. A short time before, he had given me a second article by his uncle, Prince Peter, entitled “Thoughts of a Russian Patriot,” which ends with these ringing words:

Let me be permitted to express the dearest wish of my heart, as I face God and Eternity,—an agreement of all governments in the interest of peace and humanity! May that happy day dawn when men can say, War between civilized nations is at an end.

Duke Elimar’s widow was completely overwhelmed by this sudden and premature bereavement. To my letter of condolence she wrote me the following answer, which throws a brilliant light on the noble characteristics of the departed and his consort:

Brogan, October 29, 1895

Dear Baroness:

Most hearty thanks for your warm, sympathetic words, and also for the splendid wreath sent by the Society of the Friends of Peace, which, with so many other gifts of love and tokens of respect, adorns the last resting-place of the deceased. There is no consolation for such hours. What I have lost no one can truly realize who does not know how the inner bond that united us, joining every fiber of our two lives together, had been interwoven in the nineteen years of undivided, untroubled wedlock, so that with the uprooting of one life the thousands and thousands of roots of the other were torn from the ground. The profound loneliness which has come upon me through this loss is often scarcely to be endured, and at the present time I can hardly imagine how in this life, on this earth, I can ever again take root. One who has lived for nineteen years in such intimate relationship with a man like my husband cannot easily become accustomed to other persons.

The pure, lofty idealism which—I may say—formed the very quintessence of his being and made him so extremely lovable, so winning, and so attractive to all who came into contact with him, I shall never again find anywhere so embodied as in him, and since he has gone from me I miss him always everywhere to such a degree that it is often simply unendurable for me to be with others. And yet the proofs of unofficial, genuine, heartfelt sympathy from so many good and noble people in these days has done me unspeakable good. To you also, my dear Baroness, my best and heartiest thanks once again for all your sympathy.

Your sincerely devoted

Natalie von Oldenburg

A few years later she sent me a volume of poems dedicated to the memory of the departed and breathing a pathetic grief.