THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS CONFERENCE (MARCH 1919)
I have written a great deal about the annoyance and discomfort to
which the traveller abroad was put in the days immediately following
the Armistice; I have said nothing about the performance which had to
be gone through before the journey could actually be begun. Some day
sanity will be restored to the government of these affairs; but as a
matter of purely historic interest a record of this business will be
very amusing.
The Executive Committee of the Union of Democratic Control (of Foreign
Politics) was holding its weekly meeting, when a letter arrived
from Dr. de Jong van Beek en Donk, the secretary of the Dutch Peace
Society, inviting the Union to send delegates to the League of Nations
Conference which it was proposed to hold in Berne early in March, 1919.
It was strongly felt that no opportunity of forming international
connexions should be missed. One member after another was pressed to
go. Nobody but myself appeared to be free to do so. I had only just
returned from Switzerland and the International. The journey home had
been full of discouragement and fatigue. I was asked if I would very
much mind the trouble and weariness of a second long journey soon. I
said I had not the slightest objection to the journey, but that the
thought of the passport business was rather daunting. It was agreed
that someone in the office should do all that for me, and on that
understanding I agreed to go.
But the condition was not fulfilled. It could not be. Passport
formalities are personal matters and only in the rarest circumstances
can they be gone through by proxy. I had immediately to set about the
task myself, and a terrific task it was. The date was already February
27. The Conference was timed to begin on March 3. Two days of that time
I knew would be consumed in the journey itself. That left two for the
business of preparation. I knew no human being at that time who had
accomplished this in less than a week. Generally three weeks was looked
upon as a fairly satisfactory minimum of time for this work.
The following was the routine for a would-be traveller to Switzerland
in the early days of 1919.
To get a passport you filled in a long form requiring answers to all
sorts of impertinent questions about yourself and your immediate
ancestors, including offensive queries about your personal appearance!
You had to attach to the form a photograph of a particular sort and
size. This had to be endorsed, and your passport signed by a magistrate
or some other worthy person who knew you, and who would guarantee your
character and the truthfulness of your replies. Two other persons of
recognized social position and personal rectitude had to permit the use
of their names as guarantors. You handed the completed passport form to
the clerk at the passport office, and were generally told to call again
in three or four days. The urgency of my case inspired me to enclose a
letter to the chief passport officer in the fond hope of considerate
treatment; which to my surprise was granted to me. I remember that my
appeal fell into the hands of an extremely considerate and courteous
official.
If you were prepared to wait on the chance that your business would
come soon, you were given a number which was called out in its turn. By
sitting incredible hours without food, unless you were wise enough to
bring sandwiches, it was just possible that your number might be called
unexpectedly and your business gone through quickly. Most people grew
impatient, or could spare only an hour or two and left. They had to
take a new number and a similar chance next day; with probably similar
ill-luck. It was of the first importance to “stick it out.” Then
when the magic number you held was called, you paid your fee of five
shillings and went your way.
After you received your passport you proceeded to the Swiss Legation
for a visum. You had to fill in two forms here and attach a photograph
to each of them. You were required to sign a paper stating you were not
a Bolshevik, and had no dealings with them. You were obliged to provide
a letter from the organization on whose business you were travelling.
On the occasion of my third application I had to bring a certificate of
health and a banker’s letter stating that I was a person of substance
not likely to become a charge on the Swiss Exchequer! Another five
shillings and the visum became yours.
The next business was a British Military permit. This, I think, you
had for nothing. But you filled in two more forms, attached two more
photographs and waited long, weary hours for the calling of your number
before you got it. I waited five hours on this occasion, and stood the
whole of the time!
Lastly there was the Military Permit from the French to be obtained by
suffering the same ghastly torments. For this eight shillings was the
market price!
I regard it as one of the exploits of my life that I got through all
this disgusting business in two days. I could not have done it but for
the good fortune that threw me into the hands of considerate officials
and for my own British pertinacity. As it was I came out of the French
office in Bedford Square only five minutes before the office closed!
So I started by the usual early morning train to Folkestone, tired but
triumphant, and feeling that the nuisances ahead of me, calculated
to ruin more tempers and create more racial antagonisms than half a
century of war, were light by comparison with that whirling rush
from photographer to guarantor, from guarantor to passport office,
from passport office to doctor, from doctor to banker, from banker to
Legation, from Legation to Permit offices, with the endless filling of
forms and the interminable aching hours of waiting which I had endured
before the journey could begin.
It was a madwoman’s rush across sea and land. The Paris train was
nearly two hours late. The Gare du Nord and the Gare de Lyon are on
opposite sides of Paris. The wildest scrimmage for taxis took place. My
lucky star being still in the ascendant, I secured one, hurled myself
across Paris like a lunatic and, like a maniac, tossed myself and my
bag into the Belgarde portion of the Geneva express as the train was
actually signalled to leave!
There was no empty seat in the whole of the train. I had a first-class
ticket, but I passed the night in the corridor sitting on the end of
my suit-case. French trains are always super-heated. There had been
no time for food in Paris. Hunger, thirst and sleeplessness made that
night memorable to me. And as I have already shown, Geneva was not the
end. There was the long wait in the city and the seven hours’ journey
to Berne to follow the sleepless night from Paris to Belgarde. But it
is marvellous what can be done and endured if one is only determined
enough. I drove up to the Belle Vue Hotel at 11 o’clock on the evening
of March 2; and the Conference was due to begin the following morning.
My two fellow delegates of the Peace Council were still in London,
although they began the passport business days before I knew that I was
to be a delegate; but they yielded to the fatal temptation to leave
after waiting for a short time, returning at intervals to the office,
instead of seeing the thing through.
* * * * *
I had been in my room just long enough to turn the key in the lock when
the telephone bell rang vigorously: “Hallo, Mrs. Snowden!” came the
cheerful voice of a friend. “I have just seen your name in the hotel
register. But this is wonderful! Come and have coffee at the Vienna
Café.”
“Thank you, no,” I replied. “I’m almost dead with fatigue. If anybody
tries to keep me out of bed for five minutes, I’ll denounce him to the
police as a Bolshevik spy! I’ll see you in the morning. Good night.”
Swiss beds are soft and white and very comfortable. In ten minutes I
was snugly curled up in one of the best of them, for the first and only
time in my life grateful for the Continental habit of unpunctuality.
“That Conference is timed to begin at ten, but I am quite sure it will
be eleven,” was the last muttered thought as I fell soundly asleep.
The sun was streaming in at the window when I awoke the next morning.
I sprang out of bed and pulled back the curtain. Thick snow lay on the
ground and reflected dazzlingly the light from the sun. The sky was a
bright blue and without a cloud. Again the telephone bell rang. “There
are two young ladies to see you, madam. Shall I ask them to wait?”
asked the hotel clerk. “No, send them up--and the coffee,” I said,
scrambling back into bed and wondering who on earth it could be. Two
minutes later there followed the waiter into the room two pale girls
about twenty years of age with soft, shy manners.
“We have come to give you a welcome to the Conference and to ask you
if you will be good enough to speak at the opening session. Dear Mrs.
Snowden, we know how tired you must be, but it is so wonderful that you
are here. Do please come and say a few words of greeting to us. It will
make us so happy and we are very miserable.” They were starved girls
from Munich.
“Of course,” I said. “If you will leave me now, I will be with you in
half an hour.” And they left looking very pleased.
This Conference was not so large as the International. There were
several of the Socialists present; but, generally speaking, the
Congress was different in its personnel and in the character of those
present. It was more bourgeois in appearance. I do not say that with
the intention of reflecting upon its quality in any offensive way.
I have not the hatred of the bourgeois _because he is a bourgeois_,
which animates some Socialists. I am not sure, indeed, what the word
means precisely in the mouths of some people I know. As used by many
it appears to mean a man who wears a clean collar and cuts his hair
short; or a woman who speaks in a soft voice and wears a pretty dress.
With such persons, educated manners, courtesy in debate, destroy a
Socialist’s _bona fides_; whilst well-cut finger nails and a pair of
white cuffs positively mark him down as a “social traitor.” I am not
joking. I am stating a literal fact. With these solemn idiots the
bourgeois is a man who keeps his family respectable and goes to church
on Sunday. He is a man who retains some affection for the old-fashioned
virtues of industry and thrift. There is, for them, a bourgeois
morality, a bourgeois mentality, a bourgeois faith. Radek writes of
the necessity of destroying the bourgeois institutions of religion,
the family and private property. Lenin jeers at the bourgeois idea
of liberty. To be middle-class is to be bourgeois, even if you have
to work hard for a living. To take a pride in clean table-linen is
bourgeois. To delight in a daily bath is bourgeois. And to be bourgeois
is to be condemned by this class of “superior” person in Socialist
circles. It is all so very silly--and so very young!
The delegates to the League of Nations Conference were in the
main professional people, lawyers, professors, doctors, teachers,
journalists. One or two were aristocratically connected--Count Max
Montgelas, for instance--and there were two or three generals. But the
same features marked this Conference as the other. The German and the
Austrian delegates looked hungry and ill-nourished. All that I have
said of the German Socialists--the dry grey skin stretched tightly
over the bones, the bloodshot eyes, the pale lips, the thin nervous
hands--was true of the men and women who confronted me as I spoke on
that glorious March morning. It was a very pitiful sight and told
eloquently of what the German people had had to endure up to the time
their rulers fled before the indignant revolutionaries.
I was very happy to have arrived in time to give the greetings from
the two organizations I represented, the National Peace Council and
the Union of Democratic Control, and to be able to promise them the
presence in a few days of my two colleagues, Miss Joan Fry and Mrs.
Charles Roden Buxton.
Miss Joan Fry is one of the daughters of the late Sir Edward Fry.
She is an active member of the Society of Friends. She came to the
Conference to testify to her foreign friends of the same religious
persuasion as herself the solidarity with themselves of the like-minded
women and men of Great Britain. She made several speeches of deep
spiritual power which were well received by the delegates.
Mrs. Charles Roden Buxton, the daughter of the late Professor Jebb,
is also a Quaker. She has two very lovely children whom she adores,
and the knowledge of Europe’s suffering children moved her to come to
Berne, not only to attend the Conference, but to see what might be done
immediately to send aid to the little sufferers in Vienna. During the
weeks we were in Switzerland, she and I (but chiefly she) did what we
could to start an international organization for child relief. It was
a difficult piece of work. The Swiss were apt to be afraid of doing
anything which would seem to violate the principle of neutrality,
although I am sure they never faltered in their desire to help.
The Austrians were incapable, through suffering, of very energetic
co-operation. The French were _intransigeant_ at the time. Also, it
was very difficult to avoid falling into the hands of the selfish and
unscrupulous, never deterred from their habit of exploitation by the
thought of the poor people they were robbing. We were warned of this
man and that woman. This man was buying in a certain expensive market
for reasons of his own; that woman was taking a fat commission for
securing contracts for goods to be bought with our funds!
The Vienna children were dying for lack of fats. Mrs. Buxton determined
to send them a truck load of cod-liver oil at once, preserved milk and
milk chocolate to follow. She pledged the greater part of her private
fortune in order that its going might be expedited. It is almost
inconceivable how many difficulties were placed in the way of its going
by the authorities, in spite of the generous act of Mrs. Buxton which
satisfied the business interests. Endless delays for no obvious reason;
endless calls on dilatory officials; endless pleadings with suspicious
legations; endless regulations to be subscribed to, and finally the
probability that it would never arrive at its destination. A military
guard had to be provided to go with the train. Incredible though it
may seem, at that time, and even now, not only goods travelling by
train but whole trucks, down to the wheels and the buffers, have
entirely vanished during transit, and not a rivet or a plank has been
traced. How it is done is a matter of wild conjecture. But no valuable
stores were ever sent by train in that part of Europe without a strong
military guard.
Out of Mrs. Buxton’s noble efforts in Switzerland and those of her
devoted sister in England, Miss Eglantyne Jebb, has evolved the
Save the Children Fund, the British branch of which alone under the
chairmanship of Lord Weardale has, since its inception, raised nearly
one million pounds of English money for the relief of child-life in
the famine areas of Europe. The fund does not itself administer, but
allots to Relief Organizations already in existence if satisfied with
their work and their workers. Its great hope and desire is to continue
in existence after the pressing needs created by the war have been
met; to unite, not only in this country but all over the world, so as
to prevent waste and overlapping and to get the maximum of efficiency
out of the workers, the organizations of all kinds connected with
the nurture and protection of children in all lands. I am neither a
prophet nor the child of a prophet, but I venture to think that when
the history of these times comes to be written, the work of the Save
the Children Fund will be regarded as one of the redeeming features of
a situation otherwise black and wellnigh hopeless.
The other bright gleam on the dark sky-line of European politics in
these years will be the Society of Friends. The Quakers have done
infinite things for the relief of distress in Europe. A gallant young
soldier told me of the strength he received whenever he saw set up on
a hut somewhere in France, “Société des Amis.” In every big city and
in countless little villages of Europe their work has been quietly and
persistently carried on, without noise and self-advertisement, with no
looking for praise, and no expectation of reward. It began with the
war. It has been carried on during the peace. Many workers have died of
their labours, poisoned with typhus germs or collapsed from overwork.
Hundreds of thousands of sufferers will live to bless them, who would
have died but for their work. Countless little children have been saved
alive or preserved from stunted manhood or womanhood through them.
Their selfless devotion has softened the cruel impressions made by the
war. Their presence amongst the defeated has saved from utter hate and
despair many of those who pictured the foe to themselves as wholly
given up to revenge. To the Friends must be given the credit for the
preservation of such little faith and idealism as may still be left in
Europe.
* * * * *
The purpose of this Conference as of the other was the creation of
machinery which should aid in the preservation of international
peace. It was met to give support in particular to the League of
Nations idea. It sought to suggest such points for the Charter
issued from Paris as would make of the League of Nations a real and
vital thing. Without going into the discussions at great length it
may be briefly stated that the Conference recommended the inclusion
of all nations within the League, all-round disarmament consistent
with the preservation of internal order, and a thoroughly democratic
organization. The Peace had not yet been concluded, so that the
delegates were not influenced in their conclusions by the astounding
deviations from the Fourteen Points which that peace was so soon to
reveal. They were in the mood of wishing to join all nations in an
effort to put together the pieces of a broken and suffering Europe. And
they believed in President Wilson.
One of the most interesting personalities at this Conference was
Professor Brentano of Munich, the famous political economist. I was
coming down the stairs leading from the conference hall to the street
when a handsome old man with white hair and a keen face stopped and
addressed me. He had a nervous and slightly deprecating manner, stooped
a little, and showed pitiful signs of under-nourishment in his pale
face and rather tearful red eyes. He found it difficult to speak
without emotion of the condition of things in Bavaria, and his voice
trembled as he told of the nerve-strain under which the population
lived, partly through anxiety about food and partly through fear of
revolutionary disorders. His very obviously democratic sympathies did
not reach quite so far as the Communist regime and the amiable but
incompetent President Eisner. He told me that nobody who had food in
the house, however small in amount or poor in quality, went to bed
without feeling that his throat might be cut in the night by men mad
with hunger, who knew about the little store. He showed me a scientific
chart exhibiting in figures and curved lines the appalling tragedy of
starving and dying children in his city, the city of soft church bells
and beautiful pictures, of glorious music and fine dramatic art. It
was a Munich girl of eighteen who told me her painful story of an
elderly and unscrupulous admirer, who endeavoured to buy her with food,
a common experience in the stricken lands.
“I will give you two fresh eggs every day if you will be my ‘friend’,”
he said (it was the first time I had heard the word “friend” used in
such a sense). “I did not know that it was possible to be tempted to
so dreadful a thing by anything in the world,” said this poor thing,
her pale cheeks flushing as she spoke, “but we are all so hungry and my
mother is a sick woman. The eggs would have been very good for her. And
an egg costs many, many marks with us.” Her lip quivered and she played
nervously with the edge of her shawl. “But my Socialist faith kept me
pure. I could never have borne all the misery and hunger; I should have
drowned myself but for my belief that Socialism would do away with war
and bring a better day for us all.”
The young Socialist Toller, who spoke out bravely for the young people
in the Movement at the International, talked to me with the same bright
hope in his shining eyes. Two or three months later he was sentenced
to four years’ detention in a fortress for leading the Red Guards in
a revolt against the Whites. I had talked with him long about the
need for peacemakers in our Movement, and then he was a sincere and
unqualified pacifist. His Red Guard exploit puzzled me; but it was
explained to me that he had hoped to restrain the Red troops from
committing excesses if he went with them, and that he did not actively
provoke a violent attack. His release should be imminent--if he is not
already free.
* * * * *
One of the most distinguished of German pacifists who attended this
Conference was Professor A. W. Förster. Dr. Förster published a letter
or manifesto during the war which made some of us wonder if he were the
only Christian left in Europe, so brave and strong and unequivocal
was it! He was for some years professor at the University of Munich;
but during the war his pacifist attitude enraged the nationalist
students and members of the Faculty. His lectures were continually
interrupted by the demonstrations of these students, and the atmosphere
of study made utterly impossible. He was therefore induced to take a
year’s holiday on full pay, and retired to Switzerland to continue his
pacifist activities there. One cannot help contrasting this treatment
of its distinguished pacifist citizen by Bavaria with the treatment
accorded to the Hon. Bertrand Russell by the British Government. Six
months in prison for one of the greatest intellects that ever a country
possessed for a sentence in a magazine article which offended them! It
was an act which invited and excited the derision of the whole world of
letters.
After the Bavarian Revolution, Professor Förster was made Minister to
Switzerland under Kurt Eisner. His relations with his chief were very
peculiar. These two men were equally firm and uncompromising in their
pacifism, but in their political policy they differed. Eisner, like
most Germans, favoured the union of Austria with Germany provided the
Austrians themselves desired it. Förster was opposed to such a union.
In articles, interviews and speeches he fought against the idea, and
the people of Switzerland enjoyed the peculiar spectacle of the Prime
Minister of a German State and his Minister taking opposite sides on
one of the most important issues of foreign policy then exciting the
interest of nations! Any other Prime Minister would have recalled
Professor Förster. Any other Minister would have resigned. In spite of
many remonstrances received, Eisner declined to dismiss his Minister.
His worship of free speech was so great that he forgot all about the
common sense of politics, which requires that the representative in a
foreign country of any state should either support the policy of his
Government or be deposed. Malicious critics saw nothing but duplicity
in the extraordinary situation. They loudly and cynically averred that
the two men were marching along two different roads to the same end;
that there was a good deal of pretence about the business intended to
deceive the general public and conceal their real design; that they
were secretly hand in glove with one another. But it was not so. It
was sincere comedy sincerely played by players who did not mean to be
funny. It was one more demonstration of the effect of the supersession
of government by the debating society, and of action by talk. I have
the evidence of my own eyes and ears of the enthralling power of Dr.
Förster’s eloquence upon the young men of Berne and of the captivating
charm of Kurt Eisner’s theorizing oratory upon the delegates of a great
Conference; but theories do not quell mutinies and dogmas do not deter
the oppressor; and if ever there were a time when Bavaria (and Europe)
stood in need of practical common-sense politics it was during the
years succeeding the war and the revolutions.
* * * * *
I made one other friend from the city of Munich. There stepped into the
lift in the Belle Vue Hotel one day, a tall, slender woman dressed in
deep black who thanked me for something, I don’t know what, and began
then and there a friendship I very deeply prize. Annette Kolb is said
to have in her veins the blood of Bavarian kings. I know nothing about
that. I only know there are few women of my acquaintance who have so
much charm of personality as Miss Kolb. She is kind and tactful and of
an extraordinary wit. In a dreary wilderness of men and women without
humour she shot sparks of the divine fire and kept us from the deadly
peril of unutterable boredom on many a weary occasion.
Annette is the child of a French mother and a German father. She is the
perfect type of “one between the races.” To say that her soul is torn
is no flippant use of serious language. It is written in her face. Her
emotions ebb and flow. When France was down she was pro-French; now
that Germany is out, she is probably pro-German. She wants a union in
friendship of the two. She speaks continually of this. It is the great
theme of her writings. She had rough treatment in Dresden when making
a protest in public against the malignant lying of a certain section
of the Press. Her book, “Briefe einer Deutsch-Französin” (Letters of
a German-French), created a great stir in France and for a time was
prohibited in Germany. She is a woman of most brilliant gifts. The
intimate friend of Busoni, she is a first-rate musician herself. The
friend also of the German poet Schickele she has a just appreciation
of good verse, and writes well. She speaks several languages with the
fluency of her native tongue, and her English is a model for many an
Englishman.
There was one name on the list of delegates which attracted my special
interest, Andreas Latzko, the author of the book which caused such a
world-wide sensation, “Men in Battle.”
“What is Latzko like?” I asked a friend.
“Latzko is a pacifist monkey of Hungarian birth,” replied this
complimentary individual. Latzko is small and dark and vain. He makes
fiery speeches with nothing much in them except emotion. I should
say his experiences in the trenches have seriously impaired his
constitution and his nerve. He gives the impression of being neurotic
and erratic. He is very self-absorbed. I must tell of a curious
experience which befel, illustrative of Latzko’s temperament and
character. A friend and I were supping at the hotel where he lodged.
Presently came a message from Latzko’s son begging that we would call
and see his father. He was seriously ill in bed. “Will you go?” asked
my friend. “By all means when he is so ill. He must have something
very serious to say,” was my reply. My companion smiled sardonically,
but sent the boy with a message to say we would come up in half an
hour. When we arrived we found the poor little man sitting up in bed,
propped with pillows and making a great moan in a weak, strained voice.
He thanked us effusively for coming, gasping as he spoke. I thought he
must be dying. He spoke of his wife as of one who would soon be left
to struggle with the wicked world alone. He showed us her photograph.
She was away in Hungary. He was longing to see her. Then he came to
the real business of the occasion. Would I call and see his publisher
in England and find out why the royalties were not forthcoming. My
companion grinned again.
“Why are you laughing?” I asked, rather puzzled, as we descended the
stairs. “I am laughing at an amusing farce just played,” he said. “At
supper you sat with your back to the hotel entry. I saw Latzko enter
during our meal, look in at the glass door furtively, recognize us, and
rush upstairs to prepare for his part. The rest you know.”
“Then he is not ill,” I said disgustedly, thinking of the pillow I had
smoothed, and the tenderness I had wasted.
“Oh yes, he is ill, very ill; but not in the way you think,” was the
slow reply. “He is sick of self-love.”
One more interesting delegate at this Conference comes to my
remembrance, Professor Nicolai, a slight, fair man with hair pushed
back over a large forehead, and a thin, small chin. He presented rather
a limp appearance, doubtless due in part to under-feeding, but a little
also to the radical idealist’s too-frequent inattention to matters of
the toilet. His collar had a greyish look and his cuffs were not there!
Dr. Nicolai enjoys the distinction of being the first person to
establish the war against war on a scientific basis. His “Biology of
War” is an arresting and most valuable contribution to the literature
of the movement. During the war he was constantly coming into collision
with the German authorities for his pacifist utterances. He was several
times tried for his offences, sentenced to prison, retried and tried
again. The Government never actually imprisoned him. Such cases as his
and Dr. Förster’s are worthy of note for two reasons. There are many
people in England who believe that no voice was raised against the
war and the war policy of the German Government by Germans in Germany
during the war. This is demonstrated untrue. Then the comparatively
mild treatment by the German authorities of their pacifist professors
is interesting in view of the reputed intolerance of the German
war-lords for those not of their own political breed. In 1918 Dr.
Nicolai escaped to Denmark in an aeroplane, but is now back in his
chair at the University of Berlin. There he is the centre of vicious
attacks by reactionary professors, who pit against his new, their old,
hoping the turn of the wheel will bring back the old order to the
Fatherland.
* * * * *
The Conference and its several Commissions sat for three weeks.
There were many occasions for social intercourse between the various
sessions. The hotel was packed with interesting personalities. In view
of his elevated position as Prime Minister of Hungary, I recall with
interest my meeting with Count Teleki. He was presented to me as a
moderate Socialist. It all depends upon definition. At that time the
Bolsheviks were in power in Hungary. By comparison with Bela Kun I
imagine Count Teleki sincerely believed himself a moderate Socialist.
Or perhaps I took seriously what was intended for a joke. Perhaps it
was one of those insincerities of speech, uttered to please and without
the slightest regard to the truth, I found so common in the nationals
of Latin and Balkan countries. Count Teleki’s present behaviour
suggests the aristocratic reactionary rather than the Socialist. He is
said to have aided Kaiser Karl in his ill-timed escapade. But in the
Hôtel Belle Vue at the brilliant dinner table he was the charming,
cynical, cultivated friend of political saint and sinner alike; a
scientist in exile; a professor without a chair; a patriot without a
country; a good fellow and a jolly companion. He is a man of moderate
height, with thin features and a clean-shaven face. He is not unlike
Mr. Bertrand Russell in appearance, and is probably not more than
forty years of age. From my conversation with him I cannot imagine
for a moment that he is in sympathy with the action of the Hungarian
extremists, who have instituted a “White Terror” worse than the Red
since the fall of Bela Kun and his associates. And I think it only
fair in this connexion to say that every Hungarian with whom I spoke
in Berne agreed that Bela Kun himself was no sympathizer with the
behaviour of his own extremists. He suffered the common fate of rulers
tossed up by violent revolutions--the poisonous association of worse
and stronger men than himself.
* * * * *
There was presented to me one day in the lobby of the hotel a tall
thin man with laughing eyes and an engaging boyish manner, who had
just challenged Fate by dashing at break-neck speed from Geneva to
Berne in a powerful motor-car. His English was halting but perfectly
intelligible, and he had a way of insinuating himself into the regard
of a stranger which reminded one of the wiles of the “White-headed
Boy.” It was Prince Ludwig Windischgraetz, the Winston Churchill of
Hungary; the gay, irresponsible hero of a thousand romances, military,
political and human. He is only thirty-eight years of age, but he has
had a very full life, and has held positions of great responsibility in
his country’s public life. At the time of the Conference in Budapest
of the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies he was one of the
distinguished champions of votes for women. He was very much concerned
that I should understand that he was a sincere democrat. I remember
with some amusement at a lunch, where he and his wife, Mr. Rudolf
Kommer and myself formed the party, taking his side most heartily in a
hot discussion on the relative value of autocracy and democracy. He,
the kinsman of kings, was all for democracy. Who was against it must be
inferred. But the Prince was very much in earnest.
His memoirs, which are to be published in English very soon, will
be interesting reading if they are anything like complete, for the
adventures of this temperamental romanticist, this gallant and not too
discreet patriot, this reckless and warm-hearted young aristocrat have
been many and varied. Recklessness in politics is a dangerous thing;
but Prince Windischgraetz has the personality which reminds one how
mean a thing discretion can be. I have not the slightest doubt in my
own mind that Prince Ludwig Windischgraetz was the prime instigator and
organizer of the Kaiser Karl exploit.
But the Prince’s greatest romance is surely his wife. Princess Maria
Windischgraetz is one of the loveliest women I have ever seen. Her
beauty is of the English type: fair skin, golden hair and blue eyes.
She is one of the few women outside feminist and Socialist circles I
met on the Continent whose gaze is frank, and who leaves the impression
of a decent attitude towards men. I wearied of it almost before I
understood the sex-game as it is played in the cosmopolitan cities of
Europe (doubtless of this country also). The insolent, sidelong look,
the provocative dress, the tasteless conversation and gross manners of
the women habituées of fashionable cafés and big continental hotels
are a weariness of the flesh to the self-respecting. A relief it was
after the hectic atmosphere of the hotel reception-rooms to meet this
sweet Hungarian mother of five beautiful children who looks like a
girl, and hear her unaffected talk about her home and her country. She
very modestly claimed no understanding of politics; but had she had
the power she knew enough and felt rightly enough to have saved her
country from the pit into which politicians with more experience but
less common sense had let it fall.
We met several times, each occasion happier than the last. From
entirely different worlds, I think she would agree that we understood
each other and held many ideas in common. I remember one meeting
with peculiar tenderness. We were the guests of Mr. Rudolf Kommer on
the Gurten-külm. After dinner we walked through the trees to see the
moonlight on the Bernese Alps. I tried to comfort her with prophecies
that all would be well with Hungary one day if Hungary did not lose
faith in herself. “And when that day comes, do not, I beg of you,
copy the methods you deplore in the Bolsheviks, establishing a White
Terror instead of a Red. Someone has got to take a stand against the
iniquities and cruelties of terrorism. Let those to whom more has been
given do that, the educated, the rich, the aristocratic.”
I do not know what part, if any, Princess Maria has played in the
recent politics of Hungary. Her estates have been restored to her; her
country is hers once more. Whether or not she approved of the insane
policy which has treated simple Trade Unionists and Co-operators as
Bolsheviks, and still strikes discriminating blows at the poor Jews, I
am not able to say. Probably not. But she said to me when I begged her
to take up the cause of women in Hungary: “I have five children to care
for and a husband to look after. I have little time for politics.”
Princess Maritza von Liechtenstein is another beautiful blonde who
was living in Berne at the time of the Conference. She is stronger
looking than Princess Windischgraetz, and more vigorous and active.
Her English is amazingly perfect. She is the daughter of Count Geza
Andrassy, the Hungarian patriot, and the mother of five or six handsome
boys. She bitterly blamed Count Karolyi for having let loose the flood
of Bolshevism upon Hungary, especially criticizing his land policy and
the break up of the big estates. She evinced considerable interest
in English politics. So did her distinguished uncle. Both confessed
to a real liking for England which I believe was quite genuine.
Count Andrassy appeared much broken by his country’s afflictions. In
appearance he struck me as a refined edition of Thomas Carlyle in his
later years. He has grey hair with touches of white, a square forehead,
shaggy eyebrows, clear-cut features, a slightly stooping figure. A
striking resemblance to my own father attracted me. He walked about the
hotel full, as one could see, of grave preoccupation: not too occupied
to save a woman from a mistake! I was taking tea with him and one other
when the concierge brought to me a note from a man who claimed a mutual
friendship with a highly respected friend of my own. This man in his
wife’s name invited me to his home. I had never heard of the man. I
read the name aloud. Count Andrassy suggested that I would be wise to
decline the invitation, which I did. I afterwards discovered how right
he was!
Prince Johann von Liechtenstein, the father of the six splendid boys,
is a tall, grave, elegant man with blue eyes, black-fringed, and a
reserved and earnest manner. Soft and slow of speech, without a trace
of self-assertiveness, he made a friend of all with whom he came into
contact.
* * * * *
Before leaving Berne I paid a visit of investigation to a camp for
hungry Austrian children at Frutigen, on the invitation of Baroness
von Einam, who ran the camp. This extraordinary woman collected
incredible sums of money and organized this camp whilst other people
were busy thinking about it. There in the Swiss mountains for seven
weeks each, five or six hundred starving little Austrians lived. They
were housed in the smaller hotels. Their teachers came with them. The
villagers told us in answer to our questions that when the children
first came nobody knew they were there, they crept about so languidly
and quietly. The second week they began to sing and run about. The
third week they tore the air with their happy yells. When we saw them
they were about to go home. They looked rosy and brown and jolly.
They had played in the fields all the morning. For us they were going
to sing and dance. Their costumes were of paper, but very prettily
made. And they went through their exercises with great grace and
beauty. One incident only marred the day’s proceedings. A little girl
had written to Vienna complaining that her teacher ate all her food.
She was brought before Baroness Einam. The teacher, a red-faced girl
of over-fed appearance, feeling herself wronged, rushed at the pale
child as if to strangle her. The girl was stubborn and refused to make
amends. What was done to the little Bolshevik I don’t know. But it
was gratifying to the organizers of the scheme, and very interesting
to us to discover that the kindly Swiss peasants grew so attached to
the little Austrians that when the time came for them to go home they
offered to keep them all until the next Austrian harvest.
We drove home through the lovely Swiss scenery in the cool evening
air. But what obtrudes on the mind to spoil the memory of that drive?
The six luckless idiots, with vacant faces and staring eyes, the
disfiguring goitre thickening their poor throats, we counted on the
roadside before we were out of sight of the little mountain town.