You passed through Berlin and we knew nothing about it, when we had been taking so much pleasure in the anticipation and planning everything so as to enjoy, if possible, a few more hours of interchange of thought with you and Herr von Suttner.

For in truth I had my heart very much set on it. I would gladly have anchored our acquaintance on a ground that might be fruitful for the community. We must act (operate) on one set of principles. Guerrilla warfare of individuals, or even of groups, must be superseded by a systematic action of all under one controlling idea, with each one conscious of the object to be attained. The heads of all columns must now appear on the battlefield; those who always do nothing but talk of religion, Christianity, and the Church, without being honest men or thinking of their brothers,—those we leave to march in circuit around the battlefield as they have been doing in the past. Our idea is the conquest, not merely the combating, of the old view of the world; the new appears to me under the name “Christianity,” to you under the name “Humanity.” That ought not to separate us, however, but should make the one complement the other. Perhaps, too, with the meaning which I give to the concept “Christianity,” “Humanity brought closer to the Godhead,” you may be able to accept the word. For the success of our endeavors, and that is the only point that concerns us, the word “Christian” is indispensable. Yes, the circles that you already have will be content with the word “Man”; but millions will not accept it.

We must take Christianity seriously—that is the sentence which I lately cried out to the literary world when I had invited them to meet in the Chamber of Deputies. In speech and writing, in our own lives, wherever we come forward, we must verify the Christian consciousness, must “live love” I was understood without doubt—but faith is lacking; faith in the possibility of a realization of my endeavors. And that is fearfully sad!

Others again, who share the faith with me, cannot conceive the realization with retention of the external forms, as I strive for it; often, therefore, they scarcely believe in the audacity and intrepidity of my will. The sort of spiritualization of the established (altar and throne), or “idealization,” is to them unthinkable, and just as unthinkable to them is it that in my concrete demands on the future I go beyond them all. None of all these dream of anything so radical as the changes I want to make, because in many cases, it must be admitted, they lack the clear conscience: they want to “destroy”—much at any rate—while I would only build up.

I recently had an intensely serious interview with two teachers. One of them wanted to compile the views of the most prominent champions of the development of mankind relative to the schools: the anonymous author of Maschinenzeitalter—I helped him over the anonymity to begin with (could do so the more freely because on the day before that splendid booklet Wilhelm II., Romantiker oder Sozialist had come into my hands, on the cover of which Frau v. S. is named as the author of that work). It was highly interesting to hear and to see how the two developed the fact that, and the reasons why, they had believed, not believed, believed again, and ultimately not believed, this or that. The other observations of these (still rather young) men were also very noteworthy, their zeal for the development of mankind downright magnificent. And of such there are thousands—only the faith is lacking, and for that we ourselves are to blame, if we do not work unitedly and so become to those who are striving and willing, demanding and yearning, a real safeguard for their hopes.

Therefore, Frau von Suttner, place your efforts also under the banner of a pure religiousness, true and genuine;^[38] only so can you uphold them before every one as justified. Those who care nothing for the word “Religion” will not ostracize your efforts because of a word; and those to whom religion is everything will recognize your efforts for very religion’s sake. But religion in a sense which excludes any limitation of belief, any Churchism and any Judaism, all sectarianism, and the like.

I had my heart too much set on saying these additional words, highly honored lady; I may take it, since the acquaintance we have formed, that you have a friend’s comprehension of the unreservedness of my discussion. We are dealing here with something too high for phrase-making. Above all, I beg you to see in the fact that I have written you thus at all a proof of pure and genuine esteem—else had I remained silent. And this honest and convinced esteem I feel (together with all my family) in no less a degree for your husband, whom I respectfully salute. My wife and daughter desire me to express to both of you their warmest greetings and respects. Your visit remains for us all a valued memory.

I should not be at a loss to characterize the whole man Egidy in one word. Just as there are, for example, men of steel and iron, so hard and keen; men of gold, so good and true; men of wax, so soft and plastic; so is Egidy, in his transparent luster, a man of crystal.

After our return from Berlin we gave ourselves up once again to our literary and propagandist labors. We exerted ourselves to find out what distinguished contemporaries thought of our purposes, and to utilize their approval if we got it. So it was that I gained the authoritative approval of Björnson and Fulda and Edmondo de Amicis and Émile Zola and many others. But we also encountered opposition and doubt, though only rarely. My husband, who during our stay in Paris had won Alphonse Daudet’s sympathies, now wrote to him about the founding of the Peace Society and about the Congress in Rome, and asked him if he would help in the cause. Here is the answer:

War is odious and your work is fine. So I am with you against war; but do you really believe that we can do anything in behalf of peace except wave our arms and utter sounds? To me war is a thing fated, and the apple side of my nature—mankind is divided into pears and apples, idealists and others—the terrible apple side of me, then, takes from me all hope of success in the campaign which I am ready to undertake with you.

Remember me to Madame Suttner, and believe me wholly

And to me a famous German poet wrote:

Is there need of an express assurance of my warmest approbation of the ends and aims of the Peace League? And yet, as I am convinced that mankind, ruled as they are more by passions and instincts than by reason and love, will approach these ends only by the civilizing labors of centuries if they ever do at all, it goes against my grain to express in solemn protests, from which I am unable to hope for any practical result, pious wishes which for a nobler humane minority are self-evident. As long as European civilization is still threatened by a half-Asiatic barbarism which will never submit to an arbitrator’s decision but will yield only to force, I regard the Ceterum censeo of such congresses even as a danger, like everything else by which our readiness for defense, indispensable in the interest of the world’s peace, is impaired.

I append a few other letters from that time:

Englishmen cannot but hail with the fullest, heartiest sympathy the work which you have taken in hand, as well as the success that has attended it. The promotion of the business of peace in the nearest future depends in large measure on the mood of the German race, and on this you have already made a deep impression.

As far as I am personally concerned, I have faith enough—may I say, I have confidence enough in the power of the Christian faith?—to expect that if once the magnanimity of opposing nations is awakened, which is quite within the range of possibility, there will also be found a way to obviate the persistent causes of mutual irritation. Then the natural institutions of peace will suffice to furnish the nations with that powerful discipline, consisting in self-denial, which at present has to be maintained by perpetual readiness for war.

Would it be going too far to express the hope that even our generation may yet live to see France, Germany, Russia, fenced in as it were by a neutral girdle, enabled to improve their resources without being obliged to anticipate untoward events, and to perform their functions in the service of man—at the same time forwarding the kingdom of God on earth.

May a rich blessing attend your efforts!

I had kept up a correspondence with the chairman of the Congress at Rome, Minister Ruggero Bonghi. Here is one of his letters (the original in Italian):

Since you permit me to call you “friend,” I will no longer give you any other name, for there is none tenderer. And the consciousness that I am speaking to a friend sweetens writing for me, makes it almost seem pleasanter to me than wandering about the fields to breathe in the fresh breezes which blow here on the heights of the Apennines in these early morning hours—here where I now, as Petrarch says, “dwell serious and sad” (doglioso e grave or seggio), and where in days gone by so much martial rage was let loose, while to-day such deep peace and quiet reign. Here in this ancient Anagni whose origin is lost in gray antiquity, which took the highest place in a people that had been subjected by Rome, and which was once the home of haughty popes who from their dwelling-place there ruled the world—here, I say, I indulge in considerations about the fortunes of my country, about the difficult remedies for its ailments; and withal, in my orphanage I watch the little girls grow up. And I instruct them so that when they have grown big, and return to their families, they may have an influence upon them to make them better and may turn the future into a more friendly channel....

It almost seems to me, dear friend, that I am thus doing a work perhaps more useful—though it may be insignificant—than the work of very many who carry their chatter into the assemblies, and their passions and infatuations into the privy council. And when I think of you I rise to that ideal of unity and peace which lives in your spirit and your heart, and which bears witness to nobility of soul in those who can grasp it and love it,—while despising it, deriding it, and denying it, attests the opposite.

What has war accomplished here? It has laid waste these landscapes, and often in the course of the centuries scattered the inhabitants so that even the traces of their habitations have disappeared. Often, also, in the course of the centuries, Anagni and the Secco valley above which it lies have risen; and as often it has been again reduced by the power of arms and the ambition of the great. And now the valley is unhealthy; one can scarcely get safety from its miasmas up here, about five hundred meters above the level of the sea.

I have an idea, and I am almost afraid to express it, my dear lady. It is this: I believe that Rome, by which the first conquest of these territories was effected, also brought the first misfortune upon them. Either the whole history of the first centuries of Rome is false, or else the peoples which first fell under the Roman yoke were previously happier and more numerous and lived on healthier and more fruitful lands and in more widely spread residences than after that. What benefit has war realized here or anywhere else?

If in the deeds to which it constrains men not all is evil, and if many a virtue shines out in connection with them, this is because man, savage and—I feel like saying—bestial as he may become, still never wholly ceases to be human, and in some way mitigates the harm which his own work inflicts. If war has done anything good in any respect, this has been done, one may say, in its own despite and contrary to its intent. Even if many instincts impel man to war, how much nobler are those that repel him from it! How august sounds the voice that would restrain him from it, in comparison to the angry shout that eggs it on! To-day I read the maxim of old Lao-Tse: “If two armies of equal strength are pitted against each other, the victory belongs to that one whose leader was the more merciful.”

That is—unfortunately—not correct. But it is one of those human illusions that are more valuable than a truth, because they prove that man feels ruth at the use of arms, that his conscience is not easy even when he is compelled to use them, and that he seeks the basis for victory in some virtue, in some feeling that might absolve him. We promoters of peace, who work for it with glowing zeal, have in the last analysis no other object than this,—that man shall become wholly human.

And, as I am in the habit of ultimately ending my letters to my friends, I make an end of this one. Have a little affection for your

After my trip to Berlin I received from Bonghi the following lines, this time written in French:

I follow you and applaud you. You have everything that is necessary for the beneficent and intelligent part that you are playing. You have had the courage to go and plant our banner in Berlin, in the very fortress of our enemies.

Write me, dear Baroness, as often as you can; you will be doing me a very great favor. A thousand greetings to your husband.

From the famous Russian folklorist and professor in Moscow University, Count Kamarofski, I had received an article for my review and the following letter:

Accept my thanks for your letter and the pamphlets accompanying it. You are right: you are no stranger to me since I have learned to esteem you from your beautiful story, Die Waffen nieder. I am sending you herewith my lecture which I delivered in behalf of the famine-stricken, and give you permission to make such extracts from it as you may see fit. As for an original article for your review, I will get one ready as soon as I find the opportunity.

In Russia people defend the tremendous military preparations as necessary on account of the Triple Alliance, and especially of Germany; thus every one talks of his merely defensive designs, and attributes to his neighbor the most threatening plans. Surely a melancholy sign of the times!

In view of this, all friends of peace are called upon to act on public opinion, and through it on the governments, as much as possible; and certainly the chief part in this noble effort belongs to women, for they are most able to influence education and morals.

In August, 1892, we proceeded to Bern, where the fourth World’s Peace Congress and the fourth Interparliamentary Conference were invited to meet. It was our first journey to Switzerland—for us both an intense delight. The name Switzerland awakens in the mind a whole mass of mountain poetry and ideals of freedom: glaciers and Rütli oath, cow bells and Tell’s arrow. To go with this, a highly modern international hotel life. The plainest and most democratic country in Europe, and withal the meeting-place of the traveling aristocrats and plutocrats of the Old and New Worlds.

The way to Bern took us to the Lake of Zurich. My Own reveled in the spectacle of this magnificence of nature. Curious—when my mind reverts to the journeys which I took with my husband, it is only through the medium of the pleasure which he found in them that I recall all the beauties of art and nature which we enjoyed. Now I myself am also susceptible to such enjoyments; but when I was with him I felt only the reflex of his feelings.

We put up at the Berner Hof. On our first arrival, although it was late in the evening, we met many of our friends of the Rome Congress,—Frédéric Passy, Ducommun, the Moscheles pair, Hodgson Pratt, Pandolfi, Émile Arnaud, and many others. The next morning a new, joyous surprise: the glass door of our room opened out on a great terrace, and from here the gaze swept over the hotel garden, over the city, and over the horizon of snow-glittering peaks of the surrounding mountains.

“It is beautiful here, my Löwos!”

“Yes, My Own, beautiful; and we will have our breakfast here on the terrace.”

So the luminous pictures flash, so fresh breezes of happiness blow over from the past into my gray, lonely present, as I look back upon the journeys which we two took together, when we carried with us everywhere, into the most serious days filled with work and political problems and into the different imposing surroundings, our modest, sunshiny bit of home. On that first morning in the capital of the Swiss Confederation the mail brought me various letters,—from Count Hoyos a poem dedicated “to the Peace Council at Bern,” and entitled

Never Throw Down your Weapons

Wenn blinder Haft die Krallen regt

From the Liberal member of the Herrenhaus, Fürst Camillo Starhemberg, whom I had requested and half persuaded to come to the Interparliamentary Conference at Bern, I received the following communication, interesting from many points of view:

The quite abnormal heat that has been prevalent for some time has so affected my nerves and made me so unwell that I shall hardly be able to carry out my intention of taking part in the Conference at Bern.

I will not yet definitively decline, but I hardly believe that I can get to Bern. I have no desire to act as a dumb listener and looker-on, and for taking a part in word and deed I do not, to speak frankly, feel myself either in the mood or well enough.

At the request of Baron Pirquet I have, during the recent sessions, put questions to various members of the Herrenhaus, and sounded them as to whether they would not be pleased to take part in the deliberations of the Conference, and, anyhow, to express their sympathy with our endeavors by letting their names appear on the list of those who are working for peace in the world.

Unfortunately, the least that I got was a courteous declination; in most cases it was an ironical answer, of course always in such polite terms as admitted of no decided protest. I had also the opportunity of speaking with a personage of exalted position about the idea of peace in general, but everywhere I found expressed more or less the idea that the German lady betrothed to a German officer, on page nine of the Festival Number of Die Waffen nieder, develops:^[41] Sooner sacrifice millions, sooner bring upon men limitless misery, sooner ruin states financially, decimate the population, plunge families in want, mourning, and the deepest distress, than be unfaithful to traditional ideas; every thought of a peace movement of that kind is actually interpreted as if there must be cowardice back of it.

I cannot say that these utterances which I have recently heard enhance my hopes of a speedy success, but none the less I harbor the conviction that sometime the idea will make its way, and that at least the civilized nations of Europe will acknowledge allegiance to the principle of arbitration and will bring their controversies to a decision in that way.

I had not very long ago an extremely interesting letter from a Pole who is very warm on the peace question and sends me all sorts of peace journals and bits of news, but will not agree to peace, to the idea of a permanent peace anyway, till Poland is an independent kingdom and free both from Russia and from Austria—and he himself admits that of course this could not be attained until after a bloody war and strife. And this is the way with a good many adherents of the peace idea: first they want to see their own object attained, they shrink from no difficulties, no deluge of blood, and only when they have gained their own ends are they willing to make peace. The fact is, to accept subordination, to submit, is what individual men cannot do, much less peoples and nations; and just as we stand for the idea of peace and are carrying on a propaganda for it—of course only with very slight progress against the existing hostility to it—so others are fanning the hatred and discord of the nations, are egging on the nations to senseless national hatred, and use this to serve their own foul purposes, to attain their own despicable ends.

Most heartily wishing the best success to you at Bern, highly honored Baroness, and promising that in thought and feeling I shall be one at this so honorable assemblage which is striving for the ennobling of humanity, I sign myself with the assurance of my fullest respect and devotion,

I had also written to Alfred Nobel asking him to come to Bern and attend the deliberations of the Congress, but had received no answer to this.

—So after the festive breakfast on our terrace we went with tense anticipation to the opening of the Congress. The great hall of the Bundesrat was filled to the last seat. The galleries were crowded as densely as on days when an especially interesting parliamentary session is expected.

Louis Ruchonnet, who the year before had been President of the Swiss Republic, was to be chairman. In the hall we met several more friends. Professor Wilhelm Löwenthal of Paris was among them. After Ruchonnet’s inaugural address a representative from each of the different nations made remarks; and that brought the first formal session to a close. The deliberations did not begin till the second session, which took place in the afternoon in the hall of the Museum.

In the course of years I have attended more than a dozen peace congresses and conferences, the protocols of which I possess in as many volumes. I cannot propose to insert in these recollections of my life the speeches, resolutions, and festivities which this small library chronicles. I shall reproduce only what especially impressed itself on my mind, what was a part of my experience so to speak, and thereby afford to such of my readers as here seek a historical sketch of the movement with which my name and activities are associated a glance at its development. It is always interesting to follow the line along which certain phenomena of contemporary history move—now swiftly, now slowly, now standing still or even backing, to go forward again with all the greater rapidity; it is noteworthy, too, how many an after-phase is prophetically adumbrated, how projects come up and are dropped and afterward come up again as something entirely new; how that which is at first a matter of contention gradually becomes a matter of course, and how apparently insurmountable obstacles, which one does not even try to remove, are later found to have simply vanished away.

In Berlin no peace society had as yet been formed, so Germany was not represented by any one from its capital, but by Dr. Adolf Richter from Württemberg. From the United States Dr. Trueblood, president of the Boston Peace Society (founded in 1816), was there. Ducommun was in the chair at the second session, and made a report on the establishment of the permanent International Bureau, the honorary secretary of which this splendid man continued to be until his death in 1906.

Hodgson Pratt brought an interesting piece of information: the President of the United States had sent to all governments a letter announcing the resolution of the United States Senate and House of Representatives expressing the wish to have permanent arbitration treaties concluded with all other nations. Hodgson Pratt added to this communication the proposal that we should work in every country to have this letter answered by the respective governments. So that was the beginning—suggested by America, supported by England—of “permanent arbitration treaties.”

There was debated, and adopted, a motion proposed by E. T. Moneta, S. J. Capper, and the Baroness Suttner, with the title, “A Confederation of European States.”

Oh, that Capper! What a half comical but wholly pleasing figure of a congressman! The white beard of a prophet and a tall white hat. A vibrant voice that uttered itself by preference in French but with the most exaggerated English accent; enthusiasm and fire, and at the same time solid common sense.

But to return to the motion, “A Confederation of European States.” At that time the idea had not yet begun to be understood at all; it was generally confounded with “United States,” after the pattern of North America, and proscribed for Europe. So thoroughly proscribed that a Swiss paper called Les États-Unis d’Europe was forbidden to be brought into Austria.

The Capper-Moneta-Suttner motion read:

Whereas both the injury caused by armed peace and the danger that is ever threatening the whole of Europe from a possible great war have their basis in the condition of lawlessness in which the different states of Europe stand toward one another;

Whereas a confederation of European states, which would be desirable also in the interest of the commercial relations of all countries, would do away with this condition of lawlessness and create permanent legal relations in Europe;

And finally, whereas such a confederation would in no wise impair the independence of the individual nations as regards their internal affairs, and therefore as regards their forms of government:

The Congress invites the European peace societies and their adherents to exert themselves, as the highest aim of their propaganda, for the formation of a confederation of states on the basis of the solidarity of their interests. It moreover invites all the societies in the world, especially at the time of political elections, to draw attention to the necessity of a permanent congress of nations, to which every international question should be submitted, so that every conflict may be settled by law and not by force.

The members of the Congress—at least the greater part—were together the whole day long, for most of them lodged in the same hotel and took their meals there at a great common table between the sessions. There they went on conferring during luncheon and dinner. Especially at the after-dinner coffee, which was taken in a covered veranda adjoining the dining-room, groups of friends were formed and indulged in unconstrained conversation.

One afternoon a large circle of us was gathered in this veranda to hold a mock trial. At table a little controversy had arisen between the Marchese Pandolfi of Rome and Senator Arturo de Marcoartu of Madrid. Now, in jest, a court of justice was appointed; the two contending parties had to submit their cases, each of them chose an advocate, and the judge was to give his decision. I no longer remember what it was all about; I only know that it was very amusing. One of the advocates—it was Gaston Moch, a former French artillery officer—proved to be very witty, and the two opponents likewise put the whole tribunal in the merriest of moods by their repartee.

Arturo de Marcoartu was the only Spaniard who attended the Peace Congress; I believe the Spanish Interparliamentary Group and the Spanish Peace Society consisted of himself and no one else,—at least he was the only active member. He spoke a good deal and was very long-winded, and he was not a popular speaker because he had a very indistinct enunciation and he was all the time repeating himself; but when his speeches were read they were found to contain notable ideas. He had been working for years with the greatest zeal to help spread the idea of universal peace. Even before the first London Conference he had tried in Vienna to win to the cause a number of prominent politicians and aristocrats, and had found appreciation and assistance in Fürst Joseph Colloredo, a very liberal-minded man. The beginning of an activity had ensued, but this first stream was soon lost in the sand. I shall by and by introduce a letter from Marcoartu, containing many interesting discussions and observations which have been justified by events. As long as he lived Marcoartu never was missing at a Peace Congress or an Interparliamentary Conference; since his death, Spain has been unrepresented at the Congresses.

To return to that afternoon in the veranda: my husband, who was employed as Pandolfi’s advocate, was in the act of delivering a humorous plea, when a waiter came to me where I sat at one side, said that a gentleman in the drawing-room wished to speak to me, and handed me the man’s card,—Alfred Nobel. Joyfully surprised, I hastened to the drawing-room, where my friend came to meet me.

“You called me,” he said; “here I am. But incognito, so to speak. I do not want to take part in the Congress or make any acquaintances, only to hear something specific about the matter. Tell me what has been done so far.”

We remained absorbed in a long conversation. Alfred Nobel displayed much skepticism, yet he seemed anxious to see his doubts dispelled. He left Bern that same evening, but he made my husband and me promise to come and visit him for two days at Zurich after the Congress was adjourned.

Among the festivities which were arranged for the benefit of the Congressists was an excursion to the Lake of Lucerne. It was a grand trip. We had a collation at Lucerne. Of course toasts were made; but all after dinner eloquence evaporates with the froth of the champagne. Nevertheless, something that Ruchonnet said—not in a speech but in conversation with his vis-à-vis—made a great impression on me, and I copied it into my diary. Some one had spoken of the objection that is often heard made by the opposing party that it would be an impossibility, a misfortune, to reduce the armies—it would be simply unthinkable from the standpoint of civilization and political economy. Then Ruchonnet made this comparison: If to-day, by some misfortune, the sun should be darkened, then men would use every effort to provide artificial light and artificial heat; new industries and new professions would come into existence; and then, if after a few generations people should come along with the proposition to abolish the sun’s eclipse, there would be a general outcry, “That would be a calamity, an impossibility—what would become of the heat factories, of the numberless light-makers?”

On the day after the excursion to Lucerne the deliberations were resumed. First of all, A. G. von Suttner took the floor to protest against the false, distorted reports of a certain correspondent. The person inculpated had done nothing less than to send the newspapers a telegram in which the opening assembly was pictured as a turbulent scene among people who were stirring up war in their own camp. The speaker read aloud the distorted reports in question, which had furthermore given the foreign press material for sarcastic comments, and called on the chair to send an official denial to the newspapers; and this was done. It proved later that the correspondent was an avowed opponent, who had declared to a colleague that he was not willing that the movement should take root in Switzerland.

There did come a somewhat lively scene in the course of the Congress, however, when the Polish member of the Austrian Parliament made a speech in which he demanded the restoration of Poland as an independent kingdom. Ducommun, who was in the chair at that session, as well as several other speakers, notably Frédéric Passy, laid down the law to the Polish patriot, who would not accept the partition of his fatherland, declaring that the Congress could not possibly occupy itself with the revision of Polish history. The justice of the future is to be made ready for; the individual injustices of history cannot now be rectified, for all the divisions of the land as at present constituted are based on the ground of force; new laws, new ordinances—and they must be worked for—have no retroactive power.

Now the Parliamentarians too took their turn in Bern. Their Conference was to be opened after the close of our Congress, on the twenty-ninth of August. There we again met many old acquaintances: Dr. Baumbach and Dr. Hirsch from Berlin; Frédéric Bajer from Denmark; Philip Stanhope, brother of the Minister of War, Cremer, Dr. Clark, from England; and many others. We also learned to know many new faces: from Norway the president of the Storthing, Ullman, was present, and Honduras and San Salvador were this time represented by Minister Plenipotentiary Marquis de Castello Foglia. Altogether thirteen nations were represented. The sessions were held in the Federal Palace. The rest of us—non-parliamentarians—were allowed to be present in the galleries. The Conference was received by the director of the Department of the Exterior, Bundesrat Droz. Of the transactions I note the following:

The French Senator Trarieux and the Englishman Stanhope took up the American overture in regard to arbitration treaties and proposed the establishment of an international tribunal. Pandolfi pleaded for “a permanent International Conference.” Marcoartu demanded the neutralization of isthmuses and straits. Baumbach, vice president of the German Reichstag,—even then the German politicians were showing themselves very reserved toward the idea of peace,—spoke in behalf of the protection of private property at sea in times of war. The debate on this topic became rather excited. The Frenchman Pourquery de Boisserin explained in fiery words that a Peace Conference could not, on principle, take under advisement any eventualities of war—and there he was right, a hundred times right!

The other standpoints, however,—“that we cannot be satisfied with pious wishes; we cannot as yet proclaim permanent peace, so we must content ourselves with what is attainable, and every factor that works toward the humanizing of war, the diminution of its horrors, is itself a mighty step toward better things,”—these standpoints won the day, and the Baumbach motion was passed.

Even at luncheon—I sat between Baumbach and Pourquery—the controversy was kept up. And it has lasted till to-day. There are still those who want to guide the work of peace along the course of mitigating and regulating the phenomena of war, in order to demonstrate thereby that they are too practical to strive for the “impossible,” and in order to postpone to misty future times the attack on the real enemy, “war,” for which they show especial regard and respect; and in contradistinction to these there are those who assert that if the goal lies in the south one ought not to pave the way toward the north.

During the session of the Conference the Parliamentarians were given a festival at Interlaken. On that occasion Schenk, who afterward became President of the Confederation, offered a toast containing a prophecy for which even the speaker himself probably did not foresee so speedy a fulfillment.

“I am glad,” said he, “to see the representatives of parliaments here assembled to deliberate about peace and arbitration; still more glad should I be on the day when the official commissioners of the governments should assemble for the like purpose—and that day will come.”

That day arrived only seven years later, when twenty-seven governments sent their official representatives to The Hague for that same purpose.

We left Bern a few days before the close of the Conference in order to accept the invitation of Alfred Nobel, who was staying at Zurich. Our host had put at our disposal in the Hotel Bauer au lac, where he himself lodged, a suite of rooms that the Empress Elisabeth had vacated the day before after a short visit. I found still lying on the toilet table a pale faded rose....

Alfred Nobel came to meet us at the railway station and conducted us to the drawing-room prepared for us, and there, a half hour later, he joined us at dinner. He had us tell him all about the meetings of the Bern Congress. He also gave us his name as a member of the Austrian Peace Society, with a contribution of two thousand francs. He had sent a like sum through me to the Congress committee at Rome the year before.

“What you are handing me,—and I thank you for it,”—I said, “comes from amiability rather than from conviction. A few days ago in Bern you expressed your doubts regarding the cause....”

“Regarding the cause and its justice—no, I have no doubts about that, but only as regards the question whether it can be realized; nor do I yet know how your Unions and Congresses propose to take hold of the work....”

“Then if you knew that the work was being well taken hold of would you take a hand and help?”

“Yes, I would. Inform me, convince me,—and then I will do something great for the movement.”

I replied that I could not then, entre la poire et le fromage, explain the whole matter, expel deeply-rooted doubts, and evoke firm conviction; but I would from that time forth keep him posted, send him regularly my review and other publications appertaining to the matter, and would endeavor to give him not only “information” but enthusiasm.

“All right, try for that—I like nothing so much as to be able to feel enthusiasm, a capacity which my experiences in life, and my fellow-men, have greatly weakened.”

Nobel owned a tiny aluminium motor boat, in which we took delightful trips around the lake in his company; the silvery craft darted swiftly over the waters without rocking. We sat leaning back in comfortable deck chairs covered with soft plaids, let the magic panorama of the lake shores pass before our eyes, and talked about a thousand things between heaven and earth. Nobel and I even agreed that we would write a book together, a polemic against everything that keeps the world in wretchedness and stupidity. Nobel was very strongly inclined to Socialism in his views: thus, he said it was improper for rich men to leave their property to their relatives; he regarded great inheritances as a misfortune, for they have a paralyzing effect. Great accumulations of property should go back to the community and common purposes; the children of the rich should inherit only so much that they could be well educated and kept from want, but little enough so that they should be stimulated to work, and through this to renewed enrichment of the world.

The days in Zurich went swiftly. Trips on the lake, excursions to places within and without the city, during which I admired the opulence of the villas that fringe the city, which all look more like castles.

“Yes, the silkworms have spun all that,” said Nobel.

“Perhaps dynamite factories are even more profitable than silk mills,” I remarked, “and less innocent.”

“Perhaps my factories will put an end to war even sooner than your Congresses; on the day when two army corps may mutually annihilate each other in a second, probably all civilized nations will recoil with horror and disband their troops.”

It was his belief that scientific progress and technical discoveries are destined to regenerate mankind. “Every new discovery,” he wrote me once, “modifies the human brain and makes the new generation capable of receiving new ideas.” From a letter of Alfred Nobel’s which was not addressed to me, but came under my eyes, I copied the following passage; it gives a glimpse into his philosophy of life:

To spread the light is to spread prosperity (I mean general prosperity, not individual wealth), and with prosperity will disappear the greatest part of the evils that are the inheritance of dark ages.

The conquests of scientific investigation, and its ever-widening field, awaken in us the hope that the microbes—the soul’s as well as the body’s—will gradually disappear, and the only war which mankind will wage will be the war against these microbes. Then Bacon’s splendid phrase that there are deserts in time will be applicable only to times that lie far back in the past.

On our departure I had to reiterate my promise to keep Alfred Nobel regularly informed about the progress of the peace movement; and from that time forth, though (alas!) I never saw him again, I corresponded with him indefatigably in regard to the cause of peace. As a testimony of how quickly and eagerly he became interested in its behalf I include here a letter which he wrote me a few months after our meeting in Switzerland: