Highly honored Lady:
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.
I am yours, etc.
Graf L. Kamarowsky
XXXVII
THE BERN SESSIONS
Journey to Switzerland · Poem by Count Hoyos · Letter from Prince
Camillo Starhemberg · Opening of the Congress · First impulse to
arbitration treaties, from America · League of European states · Social
life of the Congressists · Arturo de Marcoartu · Alfred Nobel complies
with my invitation · On the Lake of Lucerne · A parable by Ruchonnet ·
Protest against distorted reports · A lively debate · Arrival of the
Interparliamentarians · The Conference · A prophetic toast
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