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:
My dear Friend:
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.
With kindest regards ever yours
A. Nobel