Volume 2 / Part 7 — PART SEVEN [CONTINUED] (continued 7)

Dear Baroness:

Will you accept my heartiest and humblest thanks for the thoroughly kind letter of the eighth which reached me yesterday, and which I should have instantly answered had not an unusually long session of the Court of Administration occupied my time. Please accept at the same time my warmest thanks for your kindness in sending me the highly interesting publication, as well as your congratulations.

I am so deeply impressed by the importance of the duty imposed upon the Hague Court of Arbitration that I was at first dubious about accepting the nomination, and not until after some explanations were made which pacified my scruples did I dare accept the complimentary mandate.

We, that is to say the Arbitration Tribunal, shall not have much to attend to at first, probably, but I confidently hope that a good vital germ has been planted, and that later, if the institution proves its value in several apparently unimportant cases, the number of its adherents and the number and importance of the contentions submitted to it will increase.

With the expression of especial respect, I am

Yours sincerely

Friedrich Schönborn

I sent my congratulations, together with a copy of my Hague diary, to two German gentlemen nominated to the same dignity. One of them did not reply at all; the other sent me three marks!

The beginning of the year 1901 still brought no cessation of the Boer War. Such a mighty power opposed to such a small one, and yet the decision was so long delayed!

Many of Bloch’s predictions regarding modern warfare were justified,—for instance, the advantage held 369by those who were on the defensive, the long, indecisive continuation of battles, the enormously increased sacrifices of money and men, and many other things. Bloch was at that time in London, where he was delivering lectures at the Navy Club before an audience of admirals and generals. Moreover, he was busily engaged with the preliminary arrangements for the founding of his War and Peace Museum at Lucerne.

Mindful of the promise which I had obtained from D’Estournelles, I wrote urging him to come to Vienna and give a lecture on the Hague Conference. He consented without hesitation. Count Apponyi, as soon as he heard of his coming, invited him to take advantage of this opportunity to spend a few days with him at his castle of Eberhard, and also to deliver a lecture in Budapest. This invitation D’Estournelles likewise accepted.

We put ourselves out to secure the attendance of a select and influential audience for the lecture in Vienna. I addressed myself to the then French ambassador, Marquis de Reverseaux, who gave me every assistance in his power in behalf of his fellow-countryman, whom he so highly prized. He not only saw to it that the members of his embassy should be present at the lecture, but he also undertook to extend invitations to the whole diplomatic corps. We for our part sent invitations to the ministers, to the principal officials at court, and to the leading politicians. We made no attempt to arrange for a particularly democratic 370assemblage, for in the first place the common people would not understand French, and in the second place we were particularly desirous that the political, court, and aristocratic circles, which are accustomed to look so superciliously cold upon the peace cause and the Hague Conference, should for once have a chance to hear an explanation of it from the lips of a man who was himself a diplomat and a politician and an aristocrat, and who had taken a prominent part in the work of the Hague Conference. I had also taken pains to get the directors of the Theresianum and the Oriental Academy to send us a number of their students, for the teaching offered would be particularly useful to just such young men, destined for political and diplomatic careers.

The affair went off brilliantly. D’Estournelles spoke splendidly, and the very numerous public, composed of just the elements that we desired, listened with great attention and approbation. It was a succès.

That evening—the lecture having occupied the time from four till six—we gave a small souper intime in honor of our foreign guest. Among those present were D’Estournelles’s two Austrian colleagues of the Hague Court, Count Schönborn and Lammasch; also Barons Ernst von Plener and Peter Pirquet of the Austrian Interparliamentary Group.

This year we did not attend the Peace Congress, which was held at Glasgow. The following letter I 371received from the American delegate to the Hague Conference, Dr. Holls, who, as it appeared, had undertaken to make a journey through Europe on a peace mission. I had extended him an invitation to visit me in Vienna.

Claridge’s Hotel, Brook Street, W.

July 26, 1901

My dear Madam:

Your friendly letter reached me here after many wanderings. I regret very sincerely not having seen you in Vienna, but my time there was exceedingly brief and almost wholly occupied with business.

As you have seen from the published interview, my journey to Russia was very satisfactory. But I do not believe that it would be advisable to publish anything further about it at present.

The miscomprehension of our work disturbs me very little; it must make its way by reason of its services. I should have been glad to discuss with you, more extensively than is possible by letter, the present phases of the question; but this year it is impossible. The thing to do now is to wait patiently. The plant is growing, and there is no object in disturbing its growth by too frequent investigation of how far it has already progressed. For that reason I regret even the holding of a Peace Congress this year.

General resolutions of condemnation are of very little value. The most we can do now is to make excrescences of militarism—for example, silly dueling—ridiculous.

With hearty respect, I remain

Yours sincerely

Dr. W. Holls

On the twelfth of June we celebrated our silver wedding; not by a great festival at home, with congratulations, deputations, and toasts, but, as usual, by an excursion into solitude. Sacred day! The retrospect upon five-and-twenty years of undisturbed comradeship! We had left Harmannsdorf two days before—no 372one knew where we had gone—like a pair of fugitive lovers. The festal day we spent in a romantic forest region, hiding ourselves in the deepest depths of the woods and calling up reminiscence after reminiscence! A rich life lay behind us. And what might come in the future? How much farther should we wander together on the path that leads from the silver to the golden wedding? How fortunate that fate gives no answer to such questions!

I had written again to the sage of Yasnaya Polyana, and in reply received the following very characteristic lines:

August 28, 1901

Dear Baroness:

I thank you for your good letter. It was very pleasant for me to know that you retain a kindly memory of me.

At the risk of being tiresome to you by repeating what I have many times said in my writings, and what I believe I have written to you, I cannot refrain from saying once again that the longer I live and the more I consider the question of war the more I am convinced that the sole solution of the question is for the citizens to refuse to be soldiers. As long as every man at the age of twenty or twenty-one abjures his religion—not only Christianity but the commandments of Moses (“Thou shalt not kill”)—and promises to kill all those whom his superior orders him to kill, even his brothers and parents, so long war will not cease; and it will grow more and more cruel, as it is already becoming in our day.

For the disappearance of war there is no need of conferences or peace societies; one thing only is needed, namely, the reëstablishment of the dignity of man. If the smallest part of the energy spent nowadays for articles and fine speeches in the conferences and peace societies were employed in the schools and among the people for destroying false religion and propagating the true, wars would soon become impossible.

373Your excellent book has had a great effect in spreading abroad a realization of the horrors of war. It would be well now to show people that they themselves are the ones that bring about all the evils of war by obeying men rather than God. I take the liberty of suggesting that you devote yourself to this task, which is the only means of attaining the end you have in view.

Begging you to excuse me for the liberty which I have taken, I remain

Yours with highest regard

Leo Tolstoi

This year, for the first time, the Nobel prizes were distributed. The date selected was the tenth of December, the anniversary of the testator’s death. The peace prize was divided and assigned in equal shares to Frédéric Passy and Henri Dunant. Highly as I regarded and still regard Dunant, persuaded as I was and am of his friendly attitude toward peace, nevertheless his services and his fame rested on a quite different field from that which Nobel had in mind. The granting of the prize to Dunant was once more a concession to that spirit which managed to force its way even into the Hague Conference, and which supports the dogma that the endeavors against war should be discreetly limited to its alleviation.

That Frédéric Passy, the oldest, the most deserving, and the most highly regarded of all pacifists, received the prize was a great satisfaction to all of us—only the whole amount should have gone to him.

I received the following letter from Dunant:

Heiden, December 10, 1901

My dear Madam:

I am impelled to offer you my homage on this day, as I have just been informed by an official telegram from Christiania that the Nobel 374peace prize has been granted to me in conjunction with my honored colleague of many years’ standing, Frédéric Passy.

This prize, gracious lady, is your work; for through your instrumentality Herr Nobel became devoted to the peace movement, and at your suggestion he became its promoter.

For more than fifty years I have been a pronounced adherent of the cause of international peace, and a fighter under the white banner. The work of international brotherhood has been my aim ever since my earliest youth. I say this and repeat it to-day more emphatically than ever in my character as founder of the universal institution of the Red Cross and as promoter of the Geneva Convention of August 22, 1864.

When, in the year 1861, I wrote my Souvenir de Solferino, my principal aim—be assured of this—was general pacification; I desired as far as I could to awaken horror of war in the readers of my book.

This has been recognized, and I will merely adduce one example. The famous Professor Marc Girardin, of the French Academy, said in an article devoted to my book, “I could wish that this book should be widely read, especially by those who love and glorify war.”

And Victor Hugo wrote me: “You furnish mankind with weapons, and you help peace by making war hateful.... I applaud your noble desire.”

I might say much on this theme, and bring forward a quantity of citations in like spirit from authorities of all kinds and all countries; but I must refrain, and beg you, Baroness, to accept the assurance of my most sincere gratitude and my deepest respect.

Henri Dunant

The yearly meeting of my Union for 1901 took the form of a sort of jubilee; ten years had passed since its establishment.

From among the many letters of greeting that reached me on this occasion I will include a few in these reminiscences, for the reason that they depict 375the status of the movement at that time, and also furnish a résumé of its philosophy.

Paris, December 27, 1901

Gracious Lady and dear Associate:

The friend has usually written you; to-day the president of the French Society for Arbitration among the Nations and—since he cannot hide the title—the first recipient of the Nobel prize sends these lines to you, though of course the friend is not eliminated. If I am correctly informed, you are holding the tenth general assembly of the society of which you are the head. And this is an event which we cannot permit to pass without notice. It means something for a Union to have lived ten years, especially for the reason that at its inception many, even among the well disposed, might reasonably have doubts of its continuance. You certainly had to meet the prejudice, if not the opposition, of some; the skepticism and the scruples of others; not to mention the ridicule of those who could not understand that a woman might take part in the political questions which, according to their ideas, are reserved exclusively for masculine intelligence and activity.

But, supported certainly by true and genuine sympathies, you have put up a good fight, and you have attained your end.

Courage, then, and patience! And may it be permitted me in my character as dean, and as a veteran of the peace militia, to send to you, and through you to transmit to your society, the thanks, the congratulations, and the benediction of all those who combine regard for human life, love for justice, and faith in the future with horror of force and bloodshed.

Frédéric Passy

Budapest, December 21, 1901

Noble and honored Baroness:

The agreeable fact that the Austrian Society of the Friends of Peace, called into existence by your Excellency, and still conducted through the indefatigable energy of your Excellency, can now look back over a ten years’ activity, constrains me to congratulate your Excellency most warmly on this circumstance.

Though there may be many who will be unable to appreciate the endeavors of the society, I can, as far as I am concerned, assure your Excellency that I can estimate at their true value all great and noble 376ideas, as well as those who labor for the accomplishment of such ideas, and so I follow these endeavors with the warmest interest.

With the highest esteem, I am yours respectfully

Szell, Prime Minister of the Kingdom of Hungary

[Telegram.] On the decennial anniversary of your Union I send you my congratulations, and beg to be enrolled as a life member of the Austrian Peace Society, at the same time calling attention to the ideas expressed in my letter of the tenth of December.

Henri Dunant

Vienna, December 30, 1901

... The friends of peace in various countries have done good service, for it is certain that they have materially contributed to the formation of the Court of Arbitration, and it cannot be doubted that their moral support is necessary to the embryonic undertaking.

I am taking the liberty, my dear Baroness, of most respectfully offering you, who have played so prominent a part in the whole movement, my best wishes for your honored person, as well as for the success of the great work.

With especial respect, yours faithfully

Schönborn, First President of the Imperial Court of Administration

Paris, December 30, 1901

Dear Madam and Friend:

You are about celebrating the decennial anniversary of the society which you called into life, and which, I hope, as a recompense therefor, will save many human lives. Be undisturbed while those who admire contentions and spectacles make sport of your endeavors; these people are looking out for their own interests, for they feel that they are threatened with ruin; in fighting against peace they are fighting for their own existence. What would become of the so-called patriotic, imperialistic, and nationalistic press in all countries if wars between nations should cease, and if the daily instigations should remain ineffectual? People would then cease buying and reading these papers. And what would become of the great sensation mongers if the continual threat of war should no longer be a burden 377on each country, and if the peaceful idea of the Court of Arbitration should make its way into the usages of mankind?

The principle of international arbitration has a great portion of the press universal against it, exactly as the same principle in its application to labor and employers of labor has the opposition of certain politicians and agitators.

Nevertheless, this last system has lately made great strides forward, and it seems like the only righteous and reasonable solution of labor difficulties.

It will be so with the international courts of arbitration as soon as the Hague Tribunal shall have begun to exert its activities. That is the real reason why it has met with such obstinate opposition; for if its doors are once opened, it will be difficult to close them again.

So let us, then, beat these doors down. Let us, in common with all true men of all lands, through our united protests compel the governments to renounce their inactivity and their unfriendliness. Let us compel them to comprehend that their duty is in harmony with their interests if they would avoid the social revolution.

After they have had the magnanimous unwisdom to call into existence the Hague Arbitration Tribunal, with the approval of the whole world, they cannot bury it alive now without bringing themselves into condemnation and betraying the fact that they are afraid of justice and are adherents of a system of violence against which public opinion long ago revolted.

In a word, let us demand the opening of the Hague Court of Arbitration! There is our salvation, there is to be found the means for hastening the accomplishment of your hopes and mine.

Most heartily and respectfully yours

D’Estournelles de Constant

Vienna, December 26, 1901

My dear Baroness:

On the occasion of the decennial celebration of the Society of Austrian Friends of Peace I am sending to the Union, and above all to you,—its spiritual head, its soul,—my best congratulations. You can look back with pride and satisfaction over this long period of unceasing activity, which, supported by intrepid faith in your noble cause, 378rejoices in such splendid success and through the results of the Hague Conference must convert the most obstinate doubter to a belief in its necessity and usefulness.

Accept, Baroness, the assurance of my especial consideration.

Chlumecky, Former Minister

Graz, December 31, 1901

The thought of universal peace can no longer be put out of the world; this is the first result of the League of the Friends of Peace!

We have the same courage—so sorely needed—for peace as the soldier has for war! Salutations, friends, for the New Year!

Peter Rosegger

Aulestad, December 18, 1901

The future of the peace cause always comes to me in the guise of a sunrise. For us Northlanders the sunrise can mean so much more than for the people to the south of us; we expect it only once in a while, and greet it as a miracle. The darkness was so oppressively long, the silence so mysterious, the first glow over the rocky peaks so deceptive! It lasts and lasts and ever grows—but still no sun! Even when the sky is already streaming full of hope—yet still no sun! And it is cold—really colder than before, for fancy has become impatient.

Then suddenly, like a flash of lightning, even while we are gazing, comes the so-long-expected Majesty! So powerful, so compellingly powerful that the eyes cannot endure it. We turn and look at the landscape, which, without our noticing it, has been so long ensouled; at the air which, without our perceiving it, has been so long flooded with light. Everything, everything, even down into the depths, and high up on the summits, is bathed in the sun, clear, complete, filled with warmth, throbbing with music....

So I think it is happening to us. In our yearning we do not take note of what is being accomplished—how near already the great sun of universal peace is. Something is coming, and it seems like a miracle. But it is no miracle; in our impatience we do not see how everything was all in readiness for it.

My greeting to the assembly!

Björnstjerne Björnson

379

LXIII THE LAST YEAR

Premonitions · Bloch’s death · The Transvaal · Stanhope on the situation · My husband’s sudden illness · Three letters · Congress in Monaco · The Oceanographic Museum · Prince Albert I · The corrective · Pierre Quillard on the Armenian horrors · The crag castle · Venetian night · The Duke of Urach · From Prince Albert’s after-dinner speech · A dedication to the German Emperor · Return home · An act of D’Estournelles’s · The first controversy before the Hague Tribunal · Opening of the Bloch Museum at Lucerne · Anti-dueling League · A letter from Prince Alfonso de Borbon · Offer for a lecture tour in the United States · Hodgson Pratt on America · Visits of Emanuel Nobel and Princess Tamara of Georgia at Harmannsdorf · Sojourn in Ellischau · A surprise · Adjournment of the Interparliamentary Conference at Vienna · The end · From the will · Provisional conclusion · What is yet to follow

The last year of him who was my all.

On New Year’s Day, 1902, all sorts of trifling annoyances happened to us.

“You will see,” said My Own, more in jest than in earnest, for he was not superstitious, “this is going to be a bad year.”

During the first week indeed came bad news, a dispatch from Warsaw,—“Johann von Bloch dead of heart disease.” Once more a mighty fellow-combatant gone from us!

The war in the Transvaal still kept on. It was now in its third year. At first the English believed that it 380was merely a little military promenade; and now these unending sacrifices and losses. I wrote to Philip Stanhope asking him if he could give me some information regarding the situation, and perhaps raise his voice against the continuance of the strife. He wrote back:

3 Carlton Gardens, S.W.

January 25, 1902

Dear Baroness de Suttner:

I am overwhelmed with confusion. I have been since the beginning of December in Italy, and have only recently returned for a short time to find your note of December 14 awaiting me.

I should have been pleased to contribute a few words to the publication of the Austrian Society upon the occasion of its 10th anniversary, though all such words of peace, coming from my country, would be in sad contrast with realities.

However, all great causes have dark moments to traverse, and there will again be a reaction against the militarism and the jingoism of the present age.

I hope to see you in Vienna in the autumn, and to find you in good health.

Please remember me to Baron de Suttner, and believe me

Sincerely yours

Philip Stanhope

This year the Peace Congress was to be held as early as April, and it was to meet at Monaco by invitation of Prince Albert. The neighborhood of Monte Carlo was a circumstance which caused some hesitation among many of our friends,—I did not share it,—and only after a considerable correspondence among the members of the Bern Bureau (in whose hands the organization of the Congress lies) was a majority won for the choice of Monaco. My husband and I were 381greatly pleased at the prospect of this trip and the visit in this paradisiac corner of the world.

My happy frame of mind was increased by the fact that my book Marthas Kinder was on the eve of appearing. The proceeds from it (my publisher, Pierson, had bought the novel with all rights, including those of translation, for an honorarium of 15,000 marks) enabled me to stave off for at least a little while longer the breaking up of our beloved Harmannsdorf, and during this time so much might happen to rescue the estate; so we looked forward with joyous hearts to the coming journey.

Only a few days before the date set for our departure, My Own was attacked by a very sudden indisposition. As he was going to get up one morning, his legs gave way. He was obliged to go back to bed, and he felt pain in his right knee. We hoped it would not amount to anything. Our trunks were already packed, the sleeping-car tickets were already bought, and our rooms in Monaco engaged. Also the lecture which I was going to deliver at a public meeting on the events of the Hague Conference was prepared and announced.

“If by day after to-morrow I am not all right again, you must go,” insisted my husband; “it is your duty.”

And so it came about. The doctor ordered that the disabled leg should be kept wrapped up and perfectly quiet. This was a great grief to us both; we had counted so much on the journey together, and the separation filled me with tribulation. Up to the last 382moment he hoped still to be able to go, or at least to follow me a day later, but it was not possible. I had to go to Monaco without him, yet I was not alone; my friend Countess Hedwig Pötting accompanied me. The delight in the visit there was spoiled for me by the separation from him and my anxiety about him. Every day I had a telegram from him, and besides he wrote me three letters. These letters lie in my jewel casket; they are the last which he ever wrote me. They must have a place in these memoirs:

Easter Sunday, 1902

My beloved Löwos:

I am afraid this written greeting will be all that you will get from me while you are in Monaco. How happy I should be if this very afternoon I could convince myself that I was going to be able to follow you. When I think that to-morrow you will probably be traveling without me, it makes my heart so terribly heavy! It was not good of Nemo^[46] to separate us so cruelly. He might have let us enjoy this little pleasure! But I will not make your heart heavier than it is already. You must keep your head clear and be easy in mind, so as to fulfill the duty which you have no right to shun.

My holiest wishes and my heart’s love accompany you on your way, my dear old Löwos, though in these circumstances it is rather a thorny way. But it ought not to be that; you must enter upon it with the joyous feeling that you are rendering a fine service and are going to render fine service yet again. So you must get all the pleasure you can out of the lovely place and the friends who all cling to you with such love and respect.

Enjoy your stay, my dearest, and then you will come back to me with all the more delight and contentment.

383This is all for this time; and now I take your dear head, my Löwos, between my hands and kiss it a thousand times.

Your Own

March 31, 1902

My dear old heart’s Löwos:

Those were sad hours of loneliness and abandonment after your departure! It enabled me to realize how deep you have grown into my heart, my precious, precious pet. Now I am trying to accustom myself to the unavoidable, but reactions will be sure to return, for I miss you too deeply.

I have followed you in my thoughts on the stages of your journey. Now you are probably through breakfast and waiting for the train at the railway station.

If only days enough had gone by, so that I could say, “Day after to-morrow it will be day after to-morrow, and so on.”

I shall not be so well looked after to-day as I am by you. Maria Louise has just been in for a moment; she has taken cold, so is not exactly rosy and merry.

As soon as I have finished writing these lines I must rest awhile. Even writing takes hold of me. I will lie back and think about you. If our nerves were only receptive for telepathy we should certainly be in close contact these days! The doctor is taking his time about his morning visit to-day; but I believe the leg is somewhat better.

Farewell, my dearest, I kiss you many thousand times.

Your Own

April 2, 1902

My precious Löwos:

Ten o’clock! There you are perhaps at this very minute standing on the platform and giving your address, which is not very long. So, as far as I can follow it, I am taking part in the Congress. The newspaper reports will not give any very detailed account of it.

Yesterday Chimani^[47] was here. He discovered some improvement, but there is still inflammation; therefore strict orders not to get out of bed.

I received your telegram yesterday evening about half past eight. I was beginning to be a trifle uneasy when no word came. My reply, 384which I intrusted to the messenger, you will not be likely to get until to-day.

It is a beautiful summer’s day—and here I am in bed! Have such a longing to get out.

Nothing interesting in the mail. Among other things a crazy letter to you from a crazy photographer in Graz. Then came a letter of twenty quarto pages from Linz and a little book which the author published ten years ago through Schabelitz. Of course I do not send you this stuff.

Thank the Hex [Countess Pötting] for her card and sisterly greeting. Kisses on thy Löwos mouth from

Thy Own

How the poor man would have enjoyed those days at Monaco! The place was all a glory of spring splendor. We had seen the Riviera before, but not at a time of such luxurious profusion of flowers.

A hall in the new building destined for the Oceanographic Museum had been cleared for the proceedings of the Congress. All the speeches and debates had a constant accompaniment of distant hammering. In the immediate neighborhood the work was at a standstill during the hours of session, but not very far away the pounding and sawing and nailing went steadily on. This seemed to disturb some of the orators; yet one of them found in it a welcome occasion for bringing out in a beautiful picture how the work in the name of which we were there assembled was also an edifice, already designed but still unfinished,—an edifice which, like this, would also arise in usefulness and beauty to the honor of the builders and to the advantage of mankind.

385After the opening session, which Prince Albert had attended, all the participants stood about in the open space before the entrance to exchange greetings and to enjoy the scenes of recognition which are repeated at every Congress: “Ah, it’s you! This is fine!”

This time all addressed me with the question, “And where is the Baron?” I had to tell them about his illness, which elicited general regret. I really believe there was no one in the whole world who had ever known him, even superficially, without being drawn into sympathy with him.

The prince stood not far from me in a group, and was talking with General Türr. I was able to get a good look at him. Of rather more than medium height, of slender and supple figure, he was then at the beginning of the fifties, but not yet turning gray. He wore a closely trimmed, dark beard, and his expression was unusually melancholy. He came up to me and offered me his hand. He was delighted, he said, to see me, for he had long known of my devotion to the cause for the furtherance of which he now desired to work as energetically as he could. He remained some time in conversation with me.

“One thing occurs to me to say to you,” he remarked in the course of the conversation; “you see this work going on here,” pointing toward the Museum; “this shows the tendency of my aims and endeavors; it is intended as a corrective,”—and now he indicated the crags of Monte Carlo visible in the distance and 386crowned with the Casino,—“a corrective to that inheritance which is so hateful to me.”

I especially recollect among the transactions the indignant and pathetic protest of the Frenchman, Pierre Quillard, against the atrocious massacres being perpetrated on the Armenians at that time, and unfortunately still going on. Thus our Congresses definitely assumed the burden of furnishing a forum for the complaints and for the defense of all the persecuted,—a service which the governments, relying on the principle of nonintervention, still refuse to undertake.

In the course of the day we members of the Congress inspected the castle which is the home of the Prince of Monaco, and which rises high above the crags. It is an antiquated edifice with battlements, outside stairways, and porticoes. In the cloistered private garden there is an endless profusion of flowers. Palms as high as a house stand there on rocky ground, to which every atom of soil had to be carried. The state rooms we saw for the first time in the evening, when they were all ablaze with light, at a gala reception given in honor of the Congress; the officials of Nice were also invited. Especially imposing is the throne room, although the throne of such a tiny kingdom is not imposing. My attention was attracted in this room to a kind of tower of flowers reaching to the ceiling. I was told that this was the throne, with its seat, its steps, and its baldachin, all masked by this gigantic screen of flowers.

387A second festivity was arranged by the city for our benefit. It was a kind of “Venetian Night.” All the ships and boats in the harbor and all the houses along the bay were illuminated, Bengal fires were blazing on the mountains, there were torchlight processions and bands of music. The entire population, strangers visiting the resort, the citizens of Monaco, laboring men, and peasants from the regions round about took part in the gayeties. Tents were pitched on the heights for the Congressists and the prince, and from here there was a fine prospect of the whole region bathed in light. I sat in the prince’s tent, between him and his cousin, the Duke of Urach. The latter, an officer in the German army, talked with me on the subject of the Congress. He granted that war would sometime be overcome by civilization, but before that day, he thought, many economic and perhaps also social battles would be fought out with weapons.

“What was discussed in the session this afternoon?” Prince Albert asked me.

“Propaganda,” I replied.

“Look at this picture and listen to this babel of voices; all the people have learned to-day that there is an active peace movement; that is a propaganda,” said the prince.

He presided at the final banquet. He sat between Madame Séverine and me. On this occasion he told me much about his labors and his plans. His book, La carrière d’un navigateur, had recently been published; 388he proposed to send it to me, and told me that I should find in it the whole story of his studies and his—soul!

When it came to the toasts he arose and delivered the first speech:

“It fills me with pride and joy” (these were almost the identical words of his exordium) “to take a place in the peace movement; for the scientific work to which my life is devoted requires for its development the victory of the peace work, the victory over the cruel inheritance of primitive barbarism, the victory over the warlike spirit which poisons the fruits of civilization.”

Not in after-dinner speeches alone—which vanish like the foam on the lifted glass—did Prince Albert utter such opinions, but also in the dedication of his book, “A Seaman’s Career,”^[48] he says:

I dedicate the German version of this book to his Majesty Emperor William II, who is the patron of labor and science, and is thus preparing for the realization of the noblest desire of human consciousness, namely the union of all civilizing forces for the purpose of bringing about the reign of an inviolable peace.

Later I saw the Emperor’s manuscript reply, in which, in a page-and-a-half quarto, he thanks his cher cousin for the dedication, and in perfect agreement with his ideas repeats the words therein referring to the peace cause.

389Although the dispatches that I got every day from Harmannsdorf were encouraging, I was feverishly impatient to be at home again. Great was the joy of being reunited. During our twenty-six years of married life this was the first time we had ever been separated for more than a day or two. We had said good-by in tears; in tears I threw my arms again around my dear one’s neck. And alas! he had not yet recovered; he was still obliged to lie in bed. His illness, so the doctor said, had been an attack of periostitis, and he was bidden to be very careful for some time to come. When he got up the first time he suffered severely from palpitation of the heart; and this was of frequent recurrence. Under the twelfth of April I find in my diary for the first time the anxious exclamation, “Palpitation again—oh, that is a serious malady.... Organic disorder—I am deeply worried.”

After some time there was an improvement and my anxieties were allayed.

The Transvaal war showed no sign of coming to an end; to be sure peace negotiations had already been broached, but no armistice was declared at the same time; on the contrary, English reënforcements were shipped anew to Africa. This caused the London Times to express great satisfaction. Oh, these war-inciting editorial patriots! The neutral powers were not to be induced to offer mediation. Surely one must not hamper the arm of a fighter! But as far as affording assistance to the fighter by lending money or 390furnishing horses,—enormous transports of horses were leaving Fiume for the English,—that the neutrals permit themselves to do. Les affaires sont les affaires!

Article 27 of the Hague Convention was forgotten. Moreover the Hague Tribunal—the poor new-born infant—seemed condemned to die for lack of sustenance. Then suddenly came a controversy which was submitted to the tribunal—an old quarrel between the United States and Mexico regarding Church property. President Roosevelt brought the matter before the Hague Tribunal.

I knew that our friend D’Estournelles, who had taken upon himself the task of preventing the work at The Hague from dying of asphyxiation, had undertaken a journey to America, where he was making a lecture tour. I suspected that he had not been without influence in bringing about the trial of the Church-property question before the tribunal. And, in fact, this was the case; two documents furnish proof of it. First, the following letter from D’Estournelles in reply to one expressing my conjecture that he had been concerned in the matter. Here is his letter:

Paris, Chamber of Deputies

September 5, 1902

Dear Friend:

You have guessed it; my object in going to the United States was in large measure to show President Roosevelt the great part he might play in world politics, now that the liberal spirit in Europe had foregone its chance. I told him the whole story and he understood it.

I said: “You are a danger or a hope for the world, according as you advance toward conquest or arbitration, toward violence or justice. 391It is believed that you are inclined to the side of violence; prove the contrary.”

“How?”

“By giving life to the Hague Court.”

And that is what the President has done. I have waited until the Court assembled before mentioning what I did. It is now in session. That is a great point, and we must praise Roosevelt, first because he deserves it, and secondly that he may find imitators.

The affectionate friend of you both

D’Estournelles

The second document is an extract from a report made by the French embassy at Washington to the Minister of Foreign Affairs in Paris. I received an authentic copy of this extract. It reads:

Washington, Embassy of the French Republic

April 7, 1902

Sir:

We must tell the truth, and render to each what is due. When, nearly two months ago, I presented M. d’Estournelles to President Roosevelt, our fellow-countryman spoke to him with much enthusiasm about the Conference at the Hague; he held up before his eyes the glory with which Mr. Roosevelt would cover his incumbency if he would open the Arbitral Tribunal for any question, no matter how insignificant, and thus give an example to the world. President Roosevelt was struck with M. d’Estournelles’s language, and yesterday I was confidentially informed by him that on the very next day after the latter’s visit he charged Mr. Hay to find some matter to submit to the permanent judges of The Hague.

(Signed) Jules Cambon

To the Minister of Foreign Affairs

And thus through the devotion of a single person, supported by the energy of a powerful ally, that machine was set in motion. A proof was given to the world that it could perform its functions. Of course 392the opponents objected that it was nothing but a quite insignificant case which was submitted—as if insignificant cases had not many times led to war. Not the case but the method is what counts.

My husband had so far recovered that we were able to go to Switzerland together to attend the opening of the Bloch Museum. The preliminary arrangements had been well advanced during the founder’s lifetime, but it took his widow’s entire energy, her entire capacity for sacrifice, and her extraordinary activity to finish the work. What the six-volume work “War” relates and proves with the printed word, the Lucerne War and Peace Museum reiterates with its weapons, its models, its pictures, and its charts.

The opening festival and the events of the succeeding days took the form of a small Peace Congress; for Madame von Bloch had invited a great number of influential personages belonging to the movement to come to Lucerne as her guests. And thus at this festival the whole company met again,—Frédéric Passy, W. T. Stead, Gaston Moch, General Türr, Madame Séverine, Dr. Richter (the veteran chairman of the German Peace Society), Professor Wilhelm Förster, Moneta, D’Estournelles, and many others.

War is the duel of the nations; the duel is war between two individuals. Now a movement had been started against the primitive custom of dueling so firmly intrenched in the continental countries, though England long ago got rid of it. Prince Löwenstein and 393Prince Alfonso de Borbon were at the head of this movement. The latter especially showed a tireless zeal. I wrote him at this time of my intention to bring the objects of the anti-dueling league up for discussion at the next meeting of the Union. The prince replied:

Ebenzweier, August 12, 1902

Madam:

I thank you heartily for your kind letter of July 22 and the prospectus of your Vienna Conference. I hope the Conference may be followed by the best results. You are working, madam, with admirable devotion to your cause. I shall be very glad to see our anti-dueling movement once more approved by your assembly, as it was last year by the one at Glasgow.

With the highest regard, I remain

Yours faithfully

Alfonso de Borbon y Austria-Este

A manager made me an offer to arrange a tour through the United States for readings from my works. I declined; My Own’s uncertain state of health would have been a sufficient excuse for refusing the offer. I had no very clear conception of America, but I have a letter from Hodgson Pratt which he wrote after making a flying trip across “the great pond,” and in which he says, among other things:

... But my visit to the States convinced me that the great treaty would come! I returned quite infatuated with the Yankees,—improved Englishmen I call them,—so bright, so clear in thought and word, so resolute, so animated, so strong! It was almost a new revelation to hear and see those dear younger cousins. They have our British solidity, but with a youthfulness we have lost. I never spent six months of such enthusiasm.

394When I first read this letter, dated in 1897, it did not mean much to me. But since I myself have been in America I understand Hodgson Pratt’s words, and I subscribe to every one of them. Yes, “clear and strong, resolute and animated,” they certainly are; yes, “a revelation,”—so appeared to me, too, that new young world!

In the summer of 1902 we received several interesting visits at Harmannsdorf; I mean visits from abroad, for with our friends of the neighborhood there was always continual going back and forth. The visitors to whom I refer came from St. Petersburg and the Caucasus.

First Emanuel Nobel, my departed friend Alfred Nobel’s nephew. I found that Emanuel had many traits of resemblance to Alfred,—the same seriousness, the same depth, the same broad, democratic ideas. In his outward semblance, also, and in his voice the nephew reminded me of the uncle. Emanuel is unmarried. The rumor that he was to marry his friend Minister Witte’s sister proved to be false; he lives in absolute devotion to his brother’s numerous family. He is at the head of the greatest naphtha business in the world. Fourteen vessels carry its products on the seas. Twice a year he journeys to Baku, where his most productive oil wells flow. When, a few years later, during the Russo-Japanese war, those oil wells were set on fire and blazed up into the skies like pillars of flame, his losses must have been immense.

395The second visit from abroad was from the Princess Tamara of Georgia and her two daughters. They stayed two days at Harmannsdorf, and we indulged in endless reminiscences of the old times in the Caucasus. That beloved, beautiful country, too, was to endure the most atrocious sufferings from that miserable war.

During August of that year my husband and I accepted an invitation from Count Heinrich Taaffe (son of the former Austrian Prime Minister) and his charming wife to visit them at Castle Ellischau in northern Bohemia, where we spent a very delightful week.

A beautiful surprise was sprung upon me there. One evening about nine o’clock, as we sat after dinner on the balcony, from which there is a wide prospect of wooded mountains outlined on the horizon, suddenly on a summit against the dark sky the word “Pax” stood out in giant letters of flame. At the same time, from the distance, little lights, glimmering ever more numerous and ever nearer, approached the castle through the shrubbery. It was a torchlight procession. A throng of people came up, a band of music began to play, and finally the whole procession halted on the open place below the balcony. A man stepped forward—he was the school-teacher—and delivered an address in Bohemian, in which the word “peace” frequently occurred. I had to make a reply, also in Bohemian, my host whispering the words to me, for I do not know my native tongue. To be sure the Kinskys 396are a Czechish family, but in my childhood the Czechish national consciousness had not awakened, and as I grew older I was no longer receptive to it, having attained the European consciousness. But I was none the less pleased with the schoolmaster’s discourse. The village people—those also from neighboring villages—stayed about for a long time; the musicians played a polka and the young people danced. My husband and I were heartily delighted with the clever little festival. Never did a more grateful fireworks audience utter its “ah!” than we at the moment when the lofty “Pax” illumined the evening sky.

Fortunate will be our descendants for whom this word shall gleam on the political horizon, not as a fleeting pyrotechnical display but as an unalterable token.

In September the Interparliamentary Conference was to have been held in Vienna. Baron Pirquet was at the head of the organization committee. The preparations were under way, the programme had been sent out, the opening day was appointed, when, just on the eve of it, a circular was dispatched stating that on account of unforeseen technical difficulties the Conference would have to be given up and postponed until the following year. Baron Pirquet confidentially informed me that the difficulties were not technical but political. This was a hard blow to him.

I also was painfully affected by the circumstance, but at this time I had quite different troubles. While at Ellischau, even while at Lucerne, My Own had 397often complained of pain, and many of our friends later told me that they had been shocked at his appearance.

A long, long illness began. First—but no. I will not here relate the story of this tragic time—not here. In Briefe an einen Toten (“Letters to One Dead”) I have related to the beloved Shade everything,—how he and how I suffered, and how he died.

December 10, 1902, was the day of his death. Up to the ninth I confided to my diary all the phases of my anxiety and my hope, my despondency and my despair. It is astounding how much like a friend such a book becomes to one—how one can tell it all one’s thoughts and complaints, how one can shed over it the tears that one must hide from others, particularly from a dear one who is ill. But on the tenth of December I could write no more, and not for a long time afterward.

Much later I came back to this trusty confidant and made a large cross on the last written leaf. On the new page I wrote:

December 29. Here yawns a terrible hiatus in this book. The most awful days of my life, henceforth to be lonely, so inexpressibly lonely....

On the tenth, after an hour of agony, and after he had called me by name, My Own, My very Own, breathed away his precious life!

Maria Louise, Sister Luise, Pauline, the two physicians, and I stood about his deathbed—endlessly sad and tragic hours....

Have lost everything!

Then followed the days and nights of the deathwatch.

So lovely he lay there with his own characteristic smile on his cold, ice-cold lips, which I could not kiss often enough....

398On the thirteenth solemn service for the dead; the weeping inmates of the house and the villagers; the mourning guests. We accompanied the coffin to Eggenburg.

On the fourteenth the journey to Gotha.

On the sixteenth the flaming pyre!

During his lifetime he whom I lost said to me many dear and beautiful words, which are imprinted on my heart; but the loveliest are those which he spoke from beyond the grave, in his last will. After a few last instructions and directions it reads:

And now, My Own, one single word to thee: Thanks! Thou hast made me happy; thou hast helped me to win from life its loveliest aspects, to get delight from it. Not a second of discontent has ever come between us, and for this I thank thy great understanding, thy great heart, thy great love!...

Thou knowest that we realized within our hearts the duty of contributing our mite to the betterment of the world, of laboring, of struggling for the right, for the imperishable light of the truth. Though I go home, for you this duty is not extinguished. Thy happy recollection of thy companion must be a support to thee. Thou must work on in our plans, for the sake of the good cause keep up the work until thou also at last shalt reach the end of the brief journey of life. Courage then! No hesitation! In what we are trying to do we are at one, and therefore must thou try still to accomplish much!

Conclusion

I am going to break off these records of my life at this point; I cannot call that which has filled my days between the tenth of December, 1902, and the present time, life. To be sure, I heeded the injunction which came to me from beyond the grave, and I have worked on; and I have seen in the loom of time much of that 399red woof to which my thoughts and desires are directed. I shall go on to speak further of that, but not in connection with the other personal things commemorated here. Moreover, the events of the last few years are still too near at hand to furnish a satisfactory perspective.

Since my career, however, does not end with that date of sorrow—since I have not yet reached, as the will says, “the end of the brief journey of life,” I shall have much more to communicate concerning the further course of that movement in which I have found my life task.

In the last six years important phases have developed in the battle between the cause of peace and the cause of war: for instance, the Anglo-French entente; the series of arbitration treaties following one after another (some among them without the usual limitations); the outbreak and fearful catastrophes of the Russo-Japanese war; the Hull incident, which, through the application of an investigation commission instituted by the Hague Court, was prevented from developing into a world conflagration; Roosevelt’s action in restoring peace in eastern Asia; the entrance of the North American group into the Interparliamentary Union; the rising cloud between England and Germany; its dissipation through the exchange of visits of international corporations brought about by the pacifists; the further assignments of the Nobel prizes; the activity and expenditures of Andrew Carnegie for peace purposes; the peaceful separation of Sweden 400and Norway, the first example of the kind in history; the lessons of the Russian revolution; the recent proposal of the English premier, Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, for a union to limit armaments; the calling of the Second Hague Peace Conference; the Interparliamentary Conference at London, at which, for the first time, members of the Russian duma participated, though on account of the dissolution of the duma they were obliged to withdraw (La douma est morte, vive la douma!); the labors and congress of the Universal Alliance of Women for Peace and Arbitration under the chairmanship of Lady Aberdeen; the Second Hague Peace Congress, this time including representatives of forty-six countries, with the wedge still further driven in by doubters and opponents determined to change the character of this world parliament so that it shall come to be merely a court to regulate wars; the favorable results, nevertheless, of this Conference resulting from the spirit of the cause and promoted by our adherents who were present; the brilliant début of the South American countries which were represented in it; the determination to continue this international coöperation; the progress of the anti-dueling movement assisted by the King of Spain and the King of Italy; the resolutions passed by the socialist congresses in favor of fighting against war; the increasing number of ententes, in which the adherents of the old views, and with them the press of almost the entire world, suspect that they can see aggressive 401alliances formed against third parties, but which in reality are merely new meshes of the net making for the peaceful organization of the world; the conquest of the air, the most revolutionary event of recent centuries in the development of civilization, but in which the shortsighted see nothing else than a useful means of hurling explosives, although it really involves the abolition of boundaries, fortifications, and customhouses; at the same time the conditions in the miserable Balkan states, where for long years brigandage and manslaughter and atrocities have been raging and the war storm may break at any moment.

I have not held myself aloof from all these things; I have chronicled them in my diaries with notes, documents, and correspondence. During these last six years I have been about the world a good deal and met many interesting people. For four winters in succession I have spent several weeks as the guest of the Prince of Monaco in his crag-seated castle, and have there met prominent personages from princely, scientific, diplomatic, and artistic circles. A journey to America^[49] brought me into touch with Roosevelt, and opened before me vistas into that country of unbounded possibilities, or, rather, as it presented itself to me, of impossibilities overcome. I have participated in the meetings of congresses during that time, namely, the Peace Congresses at Boston, Lucerne, Milan, and Munich, and the Woman’s Congress at Berlin. I attended 402as a guest the Interparliamentary Conferences at Vienna and London. I have had frequent meetings with my old colleagues, and I have seen new laborers in the common cause come to the fore: for instance, Richard Bartholdt, founder of the American group; Sir Thomas Barclay, the zealous associate promoter of the Anglo-French entente; Lubin, the initiator of the Agricultural Institute at Rome; and Bryan, the candidate for President of the United States. I have been enabled to follow the great services rendered the peace movement in Germany by Pastor Umfrid, by Professor Quidde, and by many others—I cannot name them all. In the year 1905, accompanied by Miss Alice Williams, I made a lecture tour through twenty-eight German cities. In the spring of 1906 I had to go to Christiania to deliver there before King Haakon and the Storthing the lecture required of the recipients of the Nobel prizes. At that time I made a journey through Sweden and Denmark. Finally, in 1907, just as eight years earlier, I was present at The Hague during the time of the Peace Conference, and kept an exact record of all the transactions, personages, and social functions. All these experiences, impressions, letters, and memoranda may sometime come into use for supplementing the reminiscences (so far as they bear upon the historic development of the peace movement) which are here brought to a conclusion; and, should I not myself arrange for their publication, they will be found among my possessions after I am gone.

403What the immediate future will produce in this domain will assuredly surpass in significance the modest and hidden beginnings. Though the contemporary world is quite unconscious of the fact, the movement has spread far beyond the circle of the Unions, of the resolutions, and of the personal activities of single individuals; it has grown into a struggle which involves the very conception of life and all natural laws. It has passed from the hands of the so-called “Apostles” into the hands of the powerful and into the minds of the awaking democracy; within it work a hundredfold various powers, unconscious that they are thus working. It is a process which is being accomplished by the forces of nature, a slowly growing new organization of the world. The next stage is to be something quite concrete, perfectly attainable, absolved from all theoretical and all ethical universality,—the formation of an alliance of European states.

Whatever the old system may accomplish by its endeavors, however insanely high the supplies of the opposing instruments of destruction may be heaped up, whatever horrors may break out in isolated places in the way of warlike reactions, I have no fear of being discredited in histories written in the future when I here register the prediction, Universal peace is on the way.

And even if to-day many look askance at these prophecies, and turn from the whole cause,—indifferent, yawning, shrugging their shoulders, as if it 404concerned something impractical, unessential, fanciful,—yet very speedily, if once that which is in preparation, as yet silent and unobserved, comes into sight, there will be awakened the general realization that this cause demands conscious coöperation, that it includes the mightiest task of onward-marching human society,—in a word, that it is “the one important thing.”

July, 1908

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