These pages have of late been very full of Union reports and “movement” news, and it looks as if we both had been immersed in political life and sadly taken up with league-breeding. But when I look back to those days, there rise in my memory a multitude of other recollections connected with our private life, with the family and social life that we led, and especially with our cloudlessly happy married union. The outside world with its mediæval darkness and its pitiable conditions caused us much annoyance, and we took the field against these as well as we could; we found much satisfaction, too, in the battle itself; but our chief joy, our wealth, our fullest gratification, was each other. We had lost nothing of our gayety, of our frivolous childishness, nothing of our deep, fully confiding love. We swam in it as fishes in the sea; and, whatever made us gasp and suffocate when we ventured out on the beach sands, we could always dive back again into the vivifying currents of our happiness.

A filigrain happiness, a miniature happiness. It did not consist of soaring emotions and boisterous enjoyments. The everyday was its territory; the everyday with the petty sweetnesses of comfort and humor. We were not lost in astonishment, in admiration, in worship of each other; better than anything of that kind, we loved each other,—loved with all our weaknesses and faults. To lay one’s self out to be of assistance, to procure a better existence for our fellow-men now and in the future, is all very fine. Yet the best and first of duties is to give as much joy as possible to one’s partner in life, and at the same time to be joyful one’s self. To what end do we want to free mankind from persecution, from disease, from oppression, from violent killing, if not to provide mankind with the possibility of enjoying life? So that is the chief end. But we ourselves, and those who stand nearest to us, have the same claim; why should this claim be left unrecognized, when it is the easiest of all to satisfy? If in a circle of ten each sacrifices himself for the welfare of the other nine, who of the circle gets the intended welfare? Well, we two did fare “cannibalistically well,” if not wie fünfmalhunderttausend Säuen, “like half a million swine,” as the well-known student song has it, yet like two jolly little pigs.

And it was not all a bed of roses at Harmannsdorf either. The business of the estate would not go right, the quarry least of all. They changed superintendents, changed managers, negotiated with agents for contracts, but there was no improvement. On the contrary, the enterprises planned, ever arousing new hopes, led to risks, and when they ended in smoke we were a bit worse off than before, but ready to come up to the next hope all the more trustfully. And, since a modicum of volatility was characteristic of the whole house of Suttner, we shook off the worry and took from the day whatever of good the day brought.

All these long days had also brought something of sorrow. My Own’s oldest brother Karl was suddenly attacked by pneumonia, which carried him off in a week. My sister-in-law Lotti, the Countess Sizzo by marriage, lost her husband. The bereavement was not very severe. It had not been a wretched marriage, but not a happy one either; the two were incompatible and lived for the most part separated,—he in his home in Southern Tirol, she at Harmannsdorf. Karl’s daughter Mizzi, who was then sixteen, after his death came to live in her grandparents’ house and was always with us thenceforth. Her uncle Artur, whom she genuinely worshiped, had to take her father’s place.

The liveliest intercourse was kept up with the neighboring castle of Stockern. There lived (and still live) my husband’s older brother Richard, nicknamed Igel, “hedgehog”; his wife Pauline, called Das Weib, née Ponz von Engelshofen, châtelaine of Stockern and mother of five children,—one daughter and four sons, the eldest of the sons born in 1871, the youngest in 1886, so that there was much fresh, gay youth; and, in addition, governesses, tutors, aunts, cousins, and other guests. Lively times were always going on there. Very often the whole train would come to Harmannsdorf, especially on occasion of birthdays, patron saints’ days, hunts, vintages, and harvest-homes; still more frequently we drove over to Stockern, or both families would join in excursions to near-by Rosenburg or some other place of resort.

“Das Weib” was the last survivor of several brothers and sisters who in the war year of 1866 had fallen victims to the epidemic of cholera which had broken out in the country. The stories of that time when nine persons in the family and service of Stockern were carried off by the destroying angel in six days served as the basis for the episode “The Cholera Week” in my novel Die Waffen nieder.

Now grass had grown over all that tragedy. Man’s memory is so terribly short. Stockern was now full of happy people, and we two contributed our mite to the gayeties. Uncle Artur was his young nephews’ favorite comrade, and “Tante Boulotte” was no spoil-feast either.

I recall among other things a tragi-comedy entitled “Cleopatra,” which was performed on the domestic stage. My Own had written the text, in gory doggerel, and composed the music for it as well. The rôle of the Egyptian queen was intrusted to my hands. The eldest son of the house, at that time already a lieutenant of dragoons, appeared as a helmeted officer of the Roman Guards; a neighboring proprietor played Antony; the young girls of the family had to enact the part of slaves, and the author of the masterpiece mimicked an old wandering prophet who knew all things in advance, from the Queen’s death of snake-bite up to the latest events in the Vienna city council. The governess at Stockern, a wonderfully pretty young English lady, had to play the part of Cleopatra’s maid, whose most important function it was to groom her mistress’s pet snake. Miss Pratt’s English accent had a monstrously comical effect. As she knew no German, her part had been hammered into her only with the greatest difficulty. In a soliloquy she had to apostrophize the snake intrusted to her care with the words o du elendes Mistvieh—“O you wretched dung-brute” (from that specimen of the text may be got some idea of the loftiness of the poem), but she declaimed it o du ellen Mittwoch! From that day, when people at Stockern wanted to be rude they called each other Mittwoch, “Wednesday.”

To us two the greatest festival of the year was always the twelfth of June, the anniversary of our marriage. But we never cared to celebrate it with more company than ourselves, and so it came to pass that if we were at Harmannsdorf at that date we left for parts unknown early in the morning and were gone at least twenty-four hours. Having run away on our real wedding day, we did so on the anniversaries too. Of all things, no congratulations and toasts on that day; we wanted to be alone—in devotion. We would drive down to the railway, take tickets to any station; arriving there, we would hunt up the local hotel to order a dinner, and then go out into the fields and woods. June, you know, is the happy month when everything is in full bloom, when roses grow rank and the cuckoo calls, when all nature is a wedding celebration. We would wander about for a few hours and then come to our dinner with a glorious appetite; we would have it served under an arbor in the hotel garden. And then out to the woods again. There we would seek out a shady or perchance a sunny place—we were not afraid of the sun, but had a lizard-like predilection for its caressing glow—and there other hours of hallowed dialogue would pass: hours which were prolonged till the setting of the sun, till the rising of the moon, till the blowing of the evening breezes. Then back to the inn, where supper was awaiting us in a neat room. And our material for conversation was still not exhausted—from year to year it grew richer; for what we said to each other on those days was the manifold variation of the now cheerful, now melancholy, but always sweet, theme, “Do you remember?” All that we had experienced together, seen together, learned together, we passed in review, and when we took out and rearranged our memories and conceptions it was as if we were counting treasures,—the joy of wealth obsessed us. Rich we were in remarkable memories that were common to both, rich in accordant ideas, and superlatively rich in intertwining feelings of never-cooling affection, of never-failing confidence.

And on the next day we would go back among men again—as if nothing had happened.

We had kept up a correspondence with our friends in the Caucasus. The Murats were still in Zugdidi; Prince Niko was living for the most part in St. Petersburg. One day there came from Prince André Dadiani a letter postmarked at Vienna, to say that he was passing through the city and ask if he might call. We, too, had to be in Vienna—for a festival meeting of the Peace Union, at which, among other things, Peter Rosegger and the court actor Lewinsky made addresses. Accordingly I wrote the prince to come to the meeting, and he did so. After the addresses the company stayed to supper, and our Caucasian friend stayed with us. All this may possibly have been Greek to the Russian officer who had fought at Kars, but he expressed himself as quite in sympathy with my aims and endeavors; whether from politeness or conviction, I will not undertake to say. On the following day we took him with us to Harmannsdorf, where he remained for some time as our guest.

I kept up a regular correspondence with Alfred Nobel. I will quote here some of his letters^[35]:

If I have not replied sooner to your kind and courteous letter, it is because I was in hopes of bringing you my answer de vive-voix, my respects de vif-cœur.

Here I am in Vienna, but you are not, and I am told that you do not often come. On the other hand, if I should go to Harmannsdorf I should be greatly afraid of causing you trouble, and in this respect I am as timid as the most sensitive woman.

How happy I am to know that you are happy and contented, back at last in a land which you love, and rested from struggles of which my sympathy can measure the extent.

What shall I tell you of myself—a shipwreck of youth, of joy, of hope? An empty heart, whose inventory is a white—or gray—page.

Pray remember me cordially to your husband, and accept, dear Madame, the assurance of my best sentiments founded on profound respect and genuine devotion.

The visit at Harmannsdorf was nevertheless paid. In the year 1887 we had seen Nobel again in Paris, and the following letter shows that we were urging him to visit us in our own home:

The proof that there is no justice in this world is that you take me, I am sure, for an ill-bred man and an ingrate. And yet there is no truth in it, for ever since I had the pleasure of seeing you at my house I have been anxiously watching for the moment of leisure that should permit me to go and shake hands with two friends. But if you could see, only for a day or two, the life I am leading, you would realize how impossible it is to make the two ends meet. For a week past, with my trunk packed, I have not been able to get away; and yet my visit to Manchester is urgent. But at this moment all the dynamiteurs in the world—the dynamiteurs are the directors and managers of the dynamite companies—have conspired to come here and bother me with their affairs,—conventions, plans, deceptions, etc., and I am ardently wishing that a new Mephisto would come to enrich hell with these evil-doers.

A thousand friendly things—never friendly enough for you—and the assurance of my good will.

The following letter is the answer to mine in which I wrote that I had been told at a florist’s that he was married and that the presence of a Madame Nobel had been announced in Nice. I asked whether I might congratulate him. He wrote back:

What an ingrate this old Nobel is, but in appearance only, for the friendship which he feels for you only increases, and the nearer he approaches the final nothingness the more he values the few persons—men or women—who show him a little genuine interest.

Could you have really believed that I was married, and married without informing you? That would have been a double crime against friendship and against courtesy. The bear has not as yet got so far as that.

In making me married, the florist was using flowery language. As for Madame Nobel of Nice, it was in all probability my sister-in-law. That is how the secret and mysterious marriage is explained. Everything does in the end get explained in this world below, except the magnetism of the heart, to which this same world is indebted for its existing and living. Now this magnetism is just what I must be lacking in, since there is no Madame Nobel and since in my case the dust that is thrown in the eyes is inadequately replaced by gunpowder.

You see there is no jeune femme adorée—I am quoting word for word—and I shall not find in that direction a remedy against my nervosité anormale—once more a literal quotation—or against my gloomy ideas. A few delicious days at Harmannsdorf might perhaps cure me, and if I have not as yet replied to your arch-amiable and friendly call of hospitality, that comes from a multitude of reasons which I will explain to you by word of mouth.

Whatever happens, it is absolutely necessary that I should come soon to see you, for if not, who knows if I ever have this pleasure and consolation. Fate, alas! is unwilling to be converted into an insurance company; and yet we would offer her very tempting premiums.

I beg of you, assure your husband of my best sentiments; as for yourself, it is idle to reaffirm to you my affectionate and fraternal devotion.

On December, 10, 1889, my husband’s oldest brother Karl died. As Nobel, during his last stay at Vienna, had become acquainted with Karl and his wife, I informed him of the bereavement. Nobel wrote:

On receipt of your brief note of the 10/12 I addressed to the Baronne Charles de Suttner the expression of my condolence. Will you be the intermediary of my lively sympathy for your husband and your relatives?

I also have sad news to announce. I am just here from Stockholm, where I have been to conduct to her last home my poor dear mother, who loved me as people do not love nowadays, when feverish life serves as a check on sentiment.

I press your two hands—the little hands of a dear, kind sister who wishes me well just as I wish her and hers well.

My appeal in the Neue Freie Presse of September 9, 1891, was partially reproduced in the Paris newspapers, and editorially commented on. Nobel wrote to me regarding this:

Delighted I am to see that your eloquent pleading against that horror of horrors—war—has found its way into the French Press. But I fear that out of French readers ninety-nine in a hundred are chauvinistically mad. The government here are almost in their senses; the people, on the contrary, are getting success- and vanity-drunken. A pleasant kind of intoxication, much less deleterious unless it leads to war, than spirits of wine or morphium.

And your pen—whither is it wandering now? After writing with the blood of martyrs of war, will it show us the prospect of a future fairy-land or the less utopian picture of the thinkers’ common-wealth? My sympathies are in that direction, but my thoughts are mostly wandering towards another common-wealth, where silenced souls are misery-proof.

After the Austrian Peace Society had been founded and the Roman Congress was in prospect, I informed my friend about it and asked him for a contribution to the treasury of the Union; here is his reply

I do not see very clearly what great expenses either the Peace League or the Peace Congress can have to bear. Nevertheless I am quite ready to make a pecuniary contribution to its work, and I hasten to send you for this object a check, inclosed herewith, for £80 sterling.

What you need to get, I think, is not the money but the programme. Wishes alone do not assure peace. The like may be said of big dinners with big speeches. One ought to be able to present well-minded governments with an acceptable plan. To demand disarmament is almost to make one’s self ridiculous without profiting any one. To demand the immediate establishment of a court of arbitration is to come into collision with a thousand prejudices and to make every ambitious man an obstructer. To succeed, one ought to be content with more modest beginnings, and do as they do in England with legislative projects whose success is dubious. In such cases they content themselves with passing a temporary law, limited in duration to two years or even to one year. I do not think there would be found many governments that would refuse to take into consideration such a modest proposition, provided it were supported by statesmen of note.

Would it be too much to ask, for example, that for one year the European governments should engage to refer to a tribunal formed for this purpose any difference arising between them; or if they should refuse to take this step, to defer every act of hostility until the expiration of the period stipulated?

This would be apparently little, but it is just by being content with little that one arrives at great results. A year is such a small period of time in the lives of nations, and the most blustering minister will tell himself that it is not worth while to break by force a convention of such short duration. And at the expiration of that period all the states will make haste to renew their peace compact for another year. Thus, without a shock and almost without realizing the fact, they will come to a period of prolonged peace.

Then only will it be of any use to think of proceeding little by little to that disarmament which all good men and almost all governments desire.

And suppose that in spite of everything a quarrel should break out between two governments, do you not think that nine times out of ten they would calm down during the obligatory armistice which they would have to respect?

As aforesaid: on January 1, 1892, began the publication of my review Die Waffen nieder, through the house of A. H. Fried, Berlin. The publisher helped me very zealously in the editing. Distinguished collaborators were represented in the very first numbers: Carneri, Friedrich Jodl, Ludwig Fulda, Björnson, Bonghi, Karl Henckell, Rosegger, Widman, Moritz Adler, and others sent me articles. I published the review for eight years, until the end of 1899. From that time forth its place was taken by the Friedenswarte, edited by A. H. Fried, which is still—in 1908—being published, and to which I regularly contribute a running chronicle entitled Randglossen zur Zeitgeschichte, “Comments on the History of the Time.”

But let us return to 1892. Through my participation in the Congress at Rome, through my editorial labors on the peace review, through correspondence with sympathizers in all parts of the world, through the duties connected with the Vienna Union, I was now wholly absorbed in the movement. The next object of my desire—and in this also I was incited and supported by A. H. Fried—was to see a peace society, established in Berlin likewise.

I received from the Berlin Press Society an invitation to give, on one of their literary nights in the following March, a public reading of some chapters from my novel Die Waffen nieder in behalf of the endowment fund of the Society. I accepted the invitation, and my husband and I started for Berlin full of anticipation. For I had learned by previous letters from A. H. Fried that a very special honor was in store for me, namely a banquet, whose committee of organization presented the following signatures: Dr. Baumbach, vice president of the Reichstag; Dr. Barth, member of the Reichstag and editor of the Nation; Wilhelm Bölsche, author; Oskar Blumenthal, dramatic writer; Gustav Dahms, editor of the Bazar; Paul Dobert, editor of Zur guten Stunde; Karl Frenzel, writer; Dr. Max Hirsch, member of the Reichstag; Hans Land, author; A. H. Fried, publisher; L’Arronge, theatrical manager; Fritz Mauthner, author; Dr. Arthur Levysohn, editor in chief of the Berliner Tageblatt; O. Neumann-Hofer, editor of the Magazin; Paul Schlenther; Prinz Schönaich-Carolath, member of the Reichstag; Zobeltitz; Albert Traeger, member of the Reichstag; Julius Wolff; Baron von Wolzogen; and Friedrich; Spielhagen.

It was A. H. Fried who had been the original promoter of this affair, and who had also succeeded in obtaining such brilliant names on the dinner committee. He was waiting for us at the railway station on our arrival, and this afforded me my first opportunity of becoming acquainted with the publisher and co-creator of my review. A young man of twenty-eight, all fire and flame for the cause of peace, full of zeal for organization. He began at once to unfold plans for using my presence toward realizing the establishment of a proposed union. There was already in existence a small Interparliamentary Group, and this must now be followed by a private peace society which might send its representatives to that year’s Peace Congress at Bern.

The hall where my reading had been announced as to be given had been long sold out, so that many demands for seats had to be refused. The Empress Frederick had engaged a row of places, but the death and funeral obsequies of her brother-in-law the Grand Duke of Hesse called her away from Berlin at that time.

The evening of the reading was successful—that is to say, I was received with applause and was applauded at the end; but I read altogether too softly, as I afterward heard. That the public and the critics gave me such a favorable reception in spite of that, I attributed to their sympathy with the cause which I represented.

Frédéric Passy sent a letter to me at Berlin, in which he pleaded for our cause with his usual eloquence. I handed the letter over to the editors of the Berliner Tageblatt, and it was published on the day after my reading with the following editorial comment:

Mr. Frédéric Passy, the president of the French Peace Society, a political economist whose high reputation is not confined to France, is a member of the Académie des Sciences and enjoys universal respect. If there were never any but such voices sounding over the Vosges from France, the cause of peace, of humanity, of the higher civilization, would soon have the victory. Let us hope that Mr. Passy’s eloquent words will waken in his own country also the universal response which they so thoroughly deserve.

A glittering picture of the dinner has remained in my memory. In the richly flower-decked banqueting-hall stood a table laid for two hundred and fifty guests. There was a preliminary gathering in side parlors, and there I made the acquaintance of a great number of literary colleagues of both sexes, and also found again many whom we had met seven years earlier at the Authors’ Convention; there were also parliamentarians, publicists, and other notabilities of Berlin. About ten o’clock Friedrich Spielhagen escorted me to the table, at which he presided. He it was, too, who pronounced the oration of the evening. After he had ended, my right-hand neighbor, Dr. Barth of the Reichstag, spoke. And now I had to express my thanks. A stenographer took down my maiden after-dinner speech, and I found it the next morning in the newspapers:

It is in joyful exhilaration that I express to you, Meister Spielhagen, and to you, Herr Dr. Barth, and to all the company who have done me the honor of gathering here, my deep-felt thanks. To be so acclaimed and by such persons—for those who entertain me are certainly among the foremost in the literary and political world here—must indeed fill any one’s heart with pride.

Indeed, if one feels, as I do, that this lavish homage so far exceeds the desert of her to whom it is offered, then must the wish be aroused to protest against it and to cry out: It is too much—take back the praise, take back the expression of such kindly sympathy! You fill me with happiness, but you fill me also with mortification.

Yet I can gather from your addresses that the reason why the honor conferred upon me so far exceeds the value of my performances and my person is that it does not really concern them, but the principles which I endeavor to serve. They are the same principles to which you, highly honored artists, representatives of the people, and publicists, devote your work and your works—the enfranchisement, ennoblement, and fraternization of civilized mankind. Those minstrels and legislators and journalists who pay homage to war and stir up national differences have assuredly remained absent from this banquet.

I trust that an echo from this festival so indescribably beautiful to me will make its way to all our fellow-citizens. By this I mean all, whatever nation they belong to, who strive for righteousness. All on this side or that side of the Rhine, this side or that side of the ocean, this side or that side of every other boundary of country or class—I could wish that these fellow-citizens of ours might learn how in the circle of the most intellectual men of the capital of the German Empire a simple woman, hitherto unknown to them, has been so brilliantly honored, merely on account of the will which she has manifested in the cause of peace. In giving me your approval for a book bearing the title “Away with Weapons,” in sanctioning my endeavor which took me to the Peace Congress at the Capitol, you coin that title into a watchword and recognize that endeavor as a legitimate ideal of civilization.

Thus understood, ladies and gentlemen, I joyfully accept all that you have said to me; thus understood, no enthusiasm is too impetuous for me, no love too warm, none of those who entertain me too high in rank and repute. With joy I take from your hands the roses and the wreaths, and—merely as an intermediary—lay them at the feet of the genius in whose name you have summoned me here. In this sense I am ready to drain my glass in the heartiest thanks to you who are present, and in brotherly greeting to the absent friends of peace in all nations, in the name of the whole table!

Albert Traeger spoke after me, and then, as a special surprise, the great tragedian Emanuel Reicher was called upon and read to us a translation of Maupassant’s short story La Mère Sauvage.

In the account given in the Berliner Tageblatt, from the pen of the editor in chief, it said:

It cannot be sufficiently reiterated that this festival has powerfully contributed to strengthen all who have at heart the blessings of international peace in their endeavor diligently to cultivate the humanitarian and civilizing might of the peace idea, without reference to the unfavorableness of the times and the tendencies of the day. Thus, then, the festival that was planned in honor of a single person may be considered as a link in the chain of phenomena by means of which the enlightened spirits of the century are seeking to build up the higher (kulturellen) interests of humanity.

Nevertheless, I must note that several Berlin newspapers spoke disparagingly of my appearance there in particular and of my aims in general, for the most part making reference to the so-often-cited saying of Moltke, “Perpetual peace is a dream and not even a beautiful one!” But even the antagonistic voices refrained from abuse and ridicule. That would not have been the case twenty or perhaps even ten years before. Then the whole matter would have been half laughed to death, half scolded to death,—or wholly smothered to death by silence.

We stayed in Berlin for a number of days, and these days were crowded with participation in conferences, talks, and plans for the establishment of a German Peace Society in Berlin. Yet nothing definitive resulted. Dr. M. Hirsch and Baumbach were in favor; Rickert disapproved.

Friedrich Spielhagen gave us a delightful reception at his house one evening before my reading took place. About forty persons were present. At the table I sat between the host and Albert Traeger. There I became acquainted with Ossip Schubin, Wolzogen, Stettenheim, Dahms, Wolff. A Prinz Reuss, an officer, asks for an introduction, and says in a modest way,—of course it was meant ironically,—

“I ought to be ashamed of being in uniform in your presence.”

I could not think of anything to say; later, on the stairs, some very appropriate answers occurred to me.

I also remember a Lucullus dinner which the proprietor of the Berliner Tageblatt, Rudolf Mosse, and his wife gave us in their splendid new palais. Frau Mosse, who was engaged in all sorts of philanthropic undertakings, often had the opportunity of talking with the Empress Frederick. She knew that the Empress would have been glad to hear me. The Empress had now returned from the funeral of the Grand Duke of Hesse, and on the next day Frau Mosse was to meet her at some kind of a function. She intended to ask her if she wished me to be presented to her. This would have been a great pleasure for me, because I cherished a deep respect for the widow of Frederick “the Noble.” But the following day I received a note from Frau Mosse stating that her plan had fallen through; her Majesty thought best to forego the pleasure—“from motives of prudence.”

Professor Wilhelm Meyer also invited us to inspect his “Urania,” and he did us the honors of all the sections, explaining the whole series of wonders in his poetically clear manner. “Those are the churches of the future,” I wrote in my diary at that time.

From Berlin we made an excursion to Hamburg. Hans Land accompanied us. My diary mentions drives among marvelously beautiful country establishments; a trip on the Elbe to Blankenese; meals in the famous Restaurant Pfordte; a performance of Der Vogelhändler in St. Paul’s Theater; and an evening tea at our rooms in the hotel. This made a vivid impression in my memory, for we had a very interesting little circle and the conversation was highly stimulating. Our guests, besides Hans Land and his sister and brother-in-law, were Dr. Löwenberg, Otto Ernst, and Detlev von Liliencron. Otto Ernst was not as yet the celebrated dramatist, but a simple school-teacher; yet he had with his Offenes Visier written himself on our hearts. Detlev von Liliencron was already at the height of his celebrity—the king of German lyric poets at that time. Certainly no pacifist; on the contrary, a strenuous, mettlesome advocate of war—but none the less admired by me. I welcomed the chance of making his acquaintance. His conversational talent was brilliant. I had corresponded with him some years before, expressing my admiration and sending him some of my husband’s writings. I insert his reply here:

How gracious and kind of you—hearty thanks! Twice already I have been eager to write to you; first after reading Es Löwos, which I find so incomparable, and then after reading the Inventarium einer Seele. I did not do so especially because I thought you would not care to pile up still more correspondence. Now I have the privilege of offering you my sincerest thanks for both,—and how touching, heart-quickening and lovely is Es Löwos!

You, most gracious Baroness, and your husband are fighting together with us, the little band that there is of us, against the absolute bogging, the absolute collapse, of our literature. We who are living shall have no laurels,—scorn and ridicule are too strong,—but we have smoothed the way for our successors.

I have already heard so much about you from my friend Hermann Friedrichs, whom I honor so highly—if only he were not so gloomy. In political matters—I am very conservative, and am growing more so every day if possible—Friedrichs and I are antipodes. But in other respects we have many views in common.

You must be in the midst of springtime in your beautiful Lower Austria; in my cloudy and ever-damp home and in the loneliness in which I am compelled to live like a deaf-mute, scarcely a leaf is on its way.

I beg you most humbly to remember me most cordially to your husband. Daredjan^[36]—wonderful.

I am the most gracious Baroness’s most obedient

Well, between the date of that letter and our meeting in Hamburg three years had passed, during which the most gracious Baroness had chosen “Away with weapons” as a watchword, which probably went against the grain of the most obedient and conservative Captain retired. None the less we got along together all right.

From Hamburg we went home by way of Berlin again, but stopped there only from one train to another. During this delay we conferred once more with Dr. M. Hirsch, who promised that he would do his best to establish a Berlin Peace Union.

I have not yet told of one encounter which took place in those Berlin days. Because it was the one that made the deepest and most lasting impression on me, because it remained interwoven with my further thought and activity, I have reserved speaking of it to the end.

On the forenoon of the eighteenth of March—it was the day after my reading—we made the acquaintance of a man with whom we had already had intellectual relations for a long time,—Moritz von Egidy. I would remind the reader of his letter of November, 1891, which I quoted among the other documents addressed to me on the occasion of the Congress at Rome. Now I was to see face to face the man who had offered to join with me in “putting his hand to the latch of the gate that admits us to the age of completion.”

One forenoon during our stay in Berlin—I had just written to Egidy to ask when we might see him—his card was handed to us. He came in, and—but of this man, this creature of light who was snatched away all too soon from the world of his day, I will not speak incidentally, but devote a special chapter to him.

When the report went through the papers that a lieutenant colonel of the Prussian army had written a pamphlet entitled “Serious Thoughts,” in which he renounced the teachings of the Church, and that as a result of this he had been obliged to send in his resignation, it was regarded as a spicy bit of news. People sent for the pamphlet expecting to find in it the views of an enemy of religion; and behold, they were the thoughts, the serious and quickened thoughts, of one of the most religious and Christian men that could be found; but one who, like unnumbered multitudes of his contemporaries, did not regard the dogmas and formulas of official orthodoxy as true and binding—who, however, in contradistinction to the contemporaries that pass over this discord, considered it incompatible with his human dignity and his religious nature to pretend to a belief which he did not cherish.

His demand was that the Church should cease to impose articles of faith that are in contradiction with the conscience of the time, and that instead of the narrow sects a broad, great, united Christianity should embrace all those who feel the need of a consecrated life, and who carry in their hearts faith in God, and the Christian ideal.

Honest, solid, frank, glowing with inward warmth, was every word of the booklet; and even one who occupied a quite different standpoint—that is to say, one who had not reached the author’s degree of doubt or who had got far beyond it—could not but feel the one desire to shake that man’s hand.

That it is not compatible with the position of an active officer to utter thoughts that are not merely “serious” but revolutionary, since they assail an established institution sanctioned by the State, was doubtless clear to the penalized lieutenant-colonel himself; and he accepted his discharge without resentment, as a matter of course. And where he had posted himself he kept his stand, with head erect.

To be of use to the men of his time, to make a way out of untenable contradictions for them, to free the sacredness of genuine inward religion from external fetters of falsehood, was what had constrained him to write. And he felt himself doubly bound to continue the work that he had begun after a multitude had flocked to him waiting for his further leading.

The sentence above, “Where he had posted himself he kept his stand,” is in reality inaccurate, for Egidy went on from this place step by step in the same direction—that is, along the upward path of knowledge—with the same resolute gait, and where he stood a few years later he had immeasurably widened his field of view, and consequently his field of influence also. Although he remained true to himself, or rather by remaining true to himself, he had become almost another man since his first appearance with his “Serious Thoughts”; he had gone on thinking with the same seriousness, gone on willing with increasing power, and the domain which he surveyed at the end of his career, the ideal toward which he was then striving, went as far beyond his first announcement as that went beyond the narrow dogmatic track which he had originally renounced. And yet he did not for a moment need to disavow the basis of his endeavor; the watchword that he followed was from first to last “Religion no longer beside our life, our life itself religion!” Only his religion was then no longer “Mere Christianity,” but the push toward goodness, inner consecration; the striving for knowledge, for development. “Love is power” was another of Egidy’s maxims. He had begun with the demand for a change in the religious sphere, because there first he felt the discrepancy between old canons and new needs of the spirit; but gradually his demands had extended to the bettering of all—especially social and political—conditions.

He had put himself at the service of his convictions with a strength of character that was matched only by his strength for work. He went on lecture tours, published a weekly entitled Die Versöhnung (“Reconciliation”), gave an answer to every one who in person or by letter came to meet him either as a seeker for advice or as an opponent; he took a stand publicly with regard to all problems and events of the day, and when election time came he announced himself a candidate for the Reichstag.

But the election went against him. One who subscribes to no party programme does not get the voters, for they too have been drilled into partisan politics.

Here are a few passages which I have extracted from his appeal to the electors, premising only that this man was never an opportunist, that he forever scorned to say A and insinuate B, or to show gray in order to attain white. Certainly this method is unpolitical according to prevalent customs, and apparently Egidy’s attempt to enter political life was wrecked on that reef. The worship of party and special interests in which our life is swamped comports but ill with a series of declarations in which the first sentence ran, “I belong to no party and to no group of interests,” and where a little further on it says:

The question does not concern the advantage of a group or class, or the principles of a party; the question is to serve the community—without any limitation of the concept. He who cannot take into his heart and brain the concept community (Gemeinsamkeif) in all its completeness and elevation, is no such representative of the people as the times require.

The goal which Egidy saw before him was,

for every individual an intellectual independence limited by nothing, and an existence secured against all material oppression, for these are the conditions of inner freedom. There is no such thing as a welfare outside of freedom, at least for any one who feels himself a man. Until all are free, none is free. The ruling portion of the people is just as little free as the ruled. The continual fear of losing the rule paralyzes the sense of welfare—makes unfree.

We need conditions which shall make it possible for every one of the people to lead a life worthy of humanity. We are a people no longer under guardians, and we shall get ourselves these conditions. The way to this end: a peaceable transformation of our circumstances, from the present as starting-point, with the unselfish coöperation of all. No tabula rasa, not a “future society” to begin day after to-morrow; but a resolution of the people, clearly expressed in some form or other, that from now on other fundamental conceptions sway our institutions and consequently our existence. The change of conditions takes place in proportion to the progressive development in ourselves.

We all, without exception, are in a process of development. The transition to a new view of the world, which has long been on the way, is to take place during the next few years in the soul of the people. Whoever hampers this development commits a crime against the ordinances of God. Only when rationality and natural sensibility rule the thought of the majority, can we dare think of actual upbuilding. All enterprises undertaken in the meantime are only barracks which will be crushed by the spirit of the new time as it will soon appear with elemental power.

Again, as to his attitude toward the military bills that were pending at the time of his candidacy, Egidy expresses himself in such fashion as no legislator in our country has yet ventured on. He binds himself neither to Yes nor to No. He reserves the right to examine each situation as it comes:

Should the duty of the representative of the people be understood as many would have it, he would not need to enter the hall, but might send in on paper the written Yes or No with which his electors have stamped him for each individual question. Just because I believe so fearlessly in the victory of good in the world as a whole, just because I believe rock-firmly in peace, I must also conscientiously hear the others. If the representative comes to-day to a decision that binds him, then he relinquishes the right to approach the champions of the measure with questions, desires, proposals, and discussions. What more intelligence does any one need who is tagged beforehand?

On the other hand, a candidate for election must carry with him serious reflections regarding this as well as every question. My reflections are as follows: I am persuaded that we are not on the immediate verge of a war; nor is a war between civilized nations any longer thinkable. We are on the verge of peace. A war of battles is a phenomenon which the consciousness of civilized nations has got beyond. “Peace” does not mean “no more struggle”; “peace” means only “no more war.” That we ourselves do not desire war and have no use for it, we affirm on every occasion; our neighbors assert the same. Either we have confidence in these assertions, and then nothing hinders us from accordingly realizing peace,—to-day we are only living in an armistice,—or we do not have confidence in these assertions, and then we must forthwith get a certainty of how we stand with our neighbors. The present status is unworthy of a dignified nation. “The quietest man cannot live in peace if it does not suit his malignant neighbor”—but the proof that the neighbor is malignant is lacking; the proof that it does not suit the neighbor is lacking; and, above all, the proof is lacking that from the moment when we should pave the way for peace it would not suit the neighbor; quite apart from the fact that we have no right to designate ourselves as quietest men. As yet nothing has been done to convince our neighbors by our actions that we love peace. Only after attempts directed toward this end have shown a negative result will it be permissible to say that our neighbor is thinking of war. But in that case the sooner we strike the better. So I shall first ask for the proof of the factors of danger which the champions of these measures may allege, and shall, as occasion may demand, suggest and support measures which shall practically demonstrate to our neighbors that love for peace which we have always professed. Si vis pacem, para pacem. One party must begin; he is free to begin who is most sensibly conscious of his strength; he is bound to begin who can say with the best conscience: “Not from fear of war do I put aside my weapons, but from love for peace.” The manliness of the nation should assuredly not be lost; but for its exercise the handiwork of war is no longer necessary, nor for its preservation the battlefield.

It was a time when in the German Empire the combating of the so-called revolutionary parties was part of the order of the day. Egidy took a stand with regard to this question also, and gave his discussion of it a particularly interesting turn; for his conception of “religion, order, propriety,”—three ideas which he assuredly held in the highest esteem,—differed fundamentally from the popular conception which demands a clinging fast to all the established. He who fights under the banner of Evolution does not want to “revolutionize” the established, but to “transform” it. I let Egidy speak for himself:

I do not see any revolution (Umsturz, “upset”) threatening, anyhow: at least I do not feel threatened so long as I still have the confidence, which hitherto remains unshaken, that we shall wake to reason at the right time. To begin with, there is no need of thinking of such a thing as an upset, but only of the breakdown, the collapse, of an antiquated view of the world. Things can come to an upset, i.e. a topsy-turvy state, a reign of terror, only if the representatives of the hitherto-existing order, in melancholy blindness or from outright selfish motives, contumaciously oppose the collapse of antiquated notions, set themselves against the breakdown of untenable social formations. That they can prevent the collapse is of course a thing not to be thought of, no more than any one may imagine that he occasioned this breakdown.

Egidy’s style acquires a distinct individuality from its conciseness and perspicuity of expression, which are the consequences of the absolute honesty and straightforwardness of his thought. Never, for the sake of a fine-sounding phrase or a rhetorical effect, will a superfluous word or a periphrasis be found in it; but the heartfelt quality of the thought does now and then create for itself new words and new compoundings which unintentionally become stylistic beauties:

The community is a living organism, in which injuries can be cured only from within outward, only by a new, pure, warm heart-blood. No sentimentality, no full-toned din of words. The will to resolve. The doing, also, by each in his own way. We want to be practical idealists, idealists in realization, idealists in act.^[37]

We were entertaining callers when Lieutenant Colonel von Egidy was announced: our ambassador Count Szechenyi, and Ossip Schubin the famous Austrian novelist, who had moved from Bohemia to Berlin awhile previously with her sister the painter. A pretty, vivacious, elegant lady. A new novel of hers had just been published, adding yet more to her already well-established reputation as a notable delineator of Austrian high life. When Egidy came in Count Szechenyi took his departure, but Ossip Schubin remained awhile longer. Joyously we went forward to greet our caller and shake hands with him. After a long correspondence a first meeting is the meeting after an absence.

Egidy, although rather short in stature, had a very martial appearance; his bearing, his voice, his accent, were altogether those of a Prussian officer of hussars. But the rigorous face with its thick mustache was lighted up by a pair of smiling, gleaming blue eyes.

The presence of the strange lady kept the conversation in conventional channels at first; there was no talk about the things that were close to our hearts. The lieutenant colonel and the authoress had ten minutes of very lively converse. Then Ossip Schubin took leave of us. Later it came out that neither of them had ever heard of the other. Evidently Egidy was not interested in fiction and Ossip Schubin cared still less for political addresses.

Then, as soon as we were alone, we broached the subject of the efforts in which we were respectively engaged. I had not then heard any of Egidy’s public speeches, but even in his conversation words flowed warmly and eloquently from his lips. He was so completely penetrated with his ideas, his plans, his hopes, that he uttered what he was full of. Such an utterance were his speeches also, as I afterward discovered; only in them he spoke with an exceptionally loud, clear, and deliberate utterance, and was often carried to heights of eloquence by his inward fire. In the drawing-room, of course, he spoke gently and more simply, but still with ever logical fullness of thought, always consistent with himself. We now let him know our ideas and aims also. The peace cause Egidy had not yet included in his programme, although theoretically he agreed with us.

The next day we visited him in his home. A beautiful, harmonious family circle. A congenial wife—born Princess of something, I have forgotten the name—and ten children. To be sure, not all ten were at home. The oldest son was serving in the navy; one daughter was studying in Sweden; but at any rate there was a fine bunch of Egidy children present, and all seemed to worship their father. One of the daughters acted as his secretary. Charming hours those were which we spent in the plainly furnished home in eager speech and reply, in which the wife and the older children took part, about the loftiest aims of human struggle and labor,—reconciliation, peace, consecration of life. “We are pulling on different ropes,” said Egidy to us, “but it is the same bell.”

Later, when on the occasion of his candidacy I wrote to him how desirable it was that such servants of the community, such thinkers who stood above narrow party interests, should be members of the popular assembly, and how different everything would then at once be, he wrote back to me:

Everything will not be different at once, but gradually—of course; but the tempo decides. “Gradually” everybody says; the point is whether it is slow step by numbers—One—back again—One—back again—Twooooo (you surely know something of the drillground?) or, of course, rather livelier, try even a bit of quick step for aught I care—no need that it be a double quick with tambours battants. And it is coming. It has to come. What phases we may still have to pass through I would not say, in view of the latest phenomena in our public life. As yet I still do not believe in a bloody settlement. The incoming of the new view of the world will come about, not without tears and outcries, but still as a natural process, as a birth.

You speak of my working power. Well, yes, I have working power and creative impulse, and how I yearn to be able to bring both “immediately” into service. Inwardly I am so well prepared and equipped that at a second’s notice I could take up my duties. I am sure of myself. If one chooses to speak at all of a value which I may be supposed to represent (as your words do in such a wonderfully pretty way), this value can only be seen in the future. Many have already spoken and written, but if they were put before the “doing” they gave out; they made miserable compromises with shallow unchangeableness and other wretched notions. Honesty, concord, the bringing into concord of preaching and practice, is what the business means for me. And in this matter I will not yield a hair’s breadth from my apprehension of the truth.

On our return from Hamburg, where we had gone after my Berlin address, we stopped in Berlin (as has already been mentioned) for only an hour at the railway station. Thereupon Egidy wrote me the following letter, which also I will put on record here because it shows so very clearly how Egidy conceived of his busy work and of a possible coöperation with me: