resulted in nothing noteworthy. The second made up for it! Whoever reads
the report of that day’s proceedings from a critically historical point
of view can detect in it the embryo of the later Hague Tribunal, which,
in turn, is at present only the embryo of what is yet to be.
Goals attained? The believer in evolution does not require them for his
assurance; the line which shows the direction taken is enough.
I took my seat in the gallery in the greatest excitement, as at the
theater when an interesting star performance is promised by the
programme. The order of the day ran: “Preliminary Plan for the
Organization of an International Tribunal of Arbitration,” presented by
Stanhope.
A new man,—the Right Honorable Philip James Stanhope, Lord
Chesterfield’s younger brother and intimate friend of the “grand old
man,” Gladstone. At Gladstone’s direct instance Stanhope had come to the
Conference in order to put before it the outcome of June 16, 1893, when
in the English House of Commons Cremer’s motion was carried, and the
Premier, in supporting it, appended the dictum that arbitration treaties
were not the last word in assuring the peace of the world; a permanent
central tribunal, a higher council of the powers, must be established.
Stanhope began his speech amid the breathless attention of the assembly.
He speaks in the purest French, almost without accent. And in spite of
all his unruffled clarity he speaks with such fire that he is frequently
interrupted with shouts of applause. After he had explained Gladstone’s
proposal he proceeded:
It is our duty now to bring this demand courageously before the
governments.
Everything which up to the present time appertains to so-called
international law has been established without precise principles, and
rests on accidents, on precedents, on the arbitrary decisions of
princes. Consequently, international law has made the least progress
of all sciences, and presents a contradictory mass of ambiguous waste
paper (_de paperasses vagues_).
Two great needs stand before the civilized nations,—an international
tribunal, and a code corresponding to the modern spirit and elastic
enough to fit new progress. This would insure the triumph of culture
and do away with the criminal recourse to deadly encounters.
As things are to-day, fresh military loans are demanded in every
parliament, and we are lashed by the press until we give our
consent.[9] It would be otherwise if we could reply: “The dangers
against which the armaments demanded are to protect us would be
obviated by the tribunal which we desire.” Therefore a project ought
to be elaborated which we might lay before the governments.
Here Stanhope developed a few points which were to be established as the
basis of the organization, and he concluded with these words:
If next year we approach the governments with such a plan, and if our
action were in unison, the future would give us the victory; at all
events, the moral victory would be assured to us in having done our
whole duty.
Then came a debate. The German deputy, Dr. Hirsch,—from the beginning
the Germans have performed the function of the brake in the Peace
Conferences,—speaks against Stanhope’s proposition, nevertheless
recognizing the noble ideas so eloquently presented:
It is essential that the members of the Conference should pass only
such resolutions as are comprehensible and practicable, and as may be
presented to the parliaments with some probability of their being
accepted; now Herr von Caprivi would certainly _never_ take into
consideration the project of an international tribunal. We ought to
avoid also inviting the curse of absurdity through plans of that kind;
for opponents are only too much inclined to ridicule the members of
the Conference as dreamers.
Houzeau de Lehaye springs from his seat like a jack-in-the-box:
In view of such great ideas [he shouts] as those that have just been
developed, in view of the establishment of a cause by such men as
Stanhope and Gladstone, the word “absurd” should never be uttered
again! [_Applause._] I second the motion.
Now the revered Passy arises:
I should like to enter my protest against a second word which my
honored friend, Dr. Hirsch, has used,—the word “never.” No great
advancement, no innovation, has ever been carried through, but that
the prediction has been made at the beginning that it could never be
done. For example, that parliamentarians from all nations should meet
to discuss the peace of the world, that they should do this in the
assembly hall of the Upper House of a monarchical state,—if the
question had been propounded five years ago, When will all this
happen? who would not have answered, “Never!”
And, in fact,—Passy accidentally hit upon the very figure,—five years
later, on the 29th of July, 1899, the International Tribunal was
established in the very city where the plan for such a tribunal,
proposed by Gladstone, was laid on the table. Dr. Hirsch’s “never” did
not last very long! To be sure, this tribunal does not as yet possess a
mandatory character; the protesters who were active in objecting to the
establishment of the tribunal at all saw to it that it should not have
this character. And all who cling to the institution of war are also
persuaded that this shall _never_ be.
Many other speakers supported the motion, and at last it was adopted
with acclamation.
I felt deeply moved; so did My Own, who sat beside me; we exchanged a
silent pressure of the hand.
The members were then chosen who should formulate the plan which was to
be laid before the next year’s Conference.
This plan,—I anticipate events in order to show that that session was
really historical,—this plan was presented to the Conference of 1895, at
Brussels, was accepted and sent to all the governments, and assuredly
contributed to the calling of the Hague Conference in 1898, and served
as a basis for the establishment of the Permanent Court of Arbitration
and its regulations.
That session brought one other sensation. After Stanhope’s motion was
adopted, Randal Cremer mounted the platform. He was greeted with loud
applause. He, together with Frédéric Passy, had been the inaugurator of
the Interparliamentary Conferences. He had secured the signatures for
the Anglo-American arbitration treaty, first in his own country and
then, after crossing the ocean, in the United States; and it was due to
him that the motion on that famous sixteenth of June, 1893, was adopted
with Gladstone’s aid. His mode of speaking is simple and unadorned; he
betrays clearly the former laboring man.
After the session he came up to us in the corridor and informed us that
before leaving home he talked with Lord Rosebery; that he had not been
permitted to repeat at the Conference what the Premier had said to him,
but it had been of the most encouraging character. His feeling of
confidence communicated itself to us.
The concluding banquet took place in the assembly room at Scheveningen.
The orchestra played all the national hymns in succession. I sat between
Rahusen and Houzeau. Stanhope delivered an extraordinarily keen and
witty speech, the venerable Passy one full of eloquence and fire. I also
had to speak. Fireworks were set off on the esplanade. The final
apotheosis formed the words _Vive la Paix_, glowing in fiery letters,
over which beamed a genius with a branch of palms.
What thoughts were in the minds of the guests of the watering-place as
they promenaded by and stared at us? Probably none, and they were not so
very far wrong; for what is left after the words have ceased, the toasts
have been pledged, and the fireworks have been sent off? Nothing! From
far down in the depths must the energies come through which epochs are
changed....
XLVI
VARIOUS RECOLLECTIONS
In Harmannsdorf again · My husband writes _Sie wollen nicht_ · Max
Nordau’s opinion of it · My labors and correspondence · Rear Admiral
Réveillère · Dolmens and menhirs · From the patriot of Brittany to the
patriot of humanity · Réveillère’s views about social economy, the lot
of the masses, professional politicians, etc. · A fine comparison ·
Deaths of Prince Achille Murat, Duke von Oldenburg, and Ruggero Bonghi
After our return from Holland to our beloved Harmannsdorf we resumed our
quiet, happy, laborious life. My Own began writing his two-volume novel
entitled _Sie wollen nicht_, which was to be his ripest work. Max Nordau
wrote to him regarding it:
Forgive me for delaying until to-day to thank you for your highly
interesting novel _Sie wollen nicht_. It takes a long time for me to
find opportunity, in my over-busy life, to read 730 pages of prose, no
matter how very easy and agreeable may be its style, unless it happens
to fit in directly with my line of work.
What I think of your character I should not be permitted to tell you.
I know that men of real character find any praise of their
characteristics disagreeable. At any rate I may say in brief that I
admire the German writer who has the courage to-day to create the
figures of a Gutfeld, Zinzler, and Kölble. Artistically your novel
stands high. Perhaps there are too many threads interwoven, and the
web is, perhaps, not drawn tight enough. That the main drama is not
introduced until the last chapters, with the appearance of Palkowski,
is no advantage from the standpoint of composition; but all that is a
trifle compared to the great advantage of its wealth of motives and
the vital energy of the complicated multitude of personages. Old
Jörgen alone would suffice to make your novel ever fresh in the
reader’s memory.
At that time I was writing _Vor dem Gewitter_. The editorial work on my
monthly periodical likewise gave me abundant occupation, and my
correspondence even more. I wrote regularly to Alfred Nobel in order to
keep him informed as to the development of the peace cause. I constantly
had long, stimulating letters from Carneri as well as from Rudolf Hoyos,
Friedrich Bodenstedt, Spielhagen, Karl von Scherzer, M. G. Conrad, and
others. I found a new, and to me personally unknown, correspondent in an
old French naval officer, Rear Admiral Réveillère. I cannot now remember
whether he wrote to me first or I to him. Whether or no, our
correspondence was based on similarity of ideas and a mutual knowledge
of each other’s writings. The first time I ever heard of Réveillère was
at the banquet of the Interparliamentary Conference of 1894, at
Scheveningen, when Frédéric Passy, in proposing a toast to the sea which
was roaring beyond the doors of the hall, said he was quoting the words
of his friend Réveillère.
Born in 1828, in Brittany, he had long followed the sea, and now was
living in retirement in Brest, his native city, known to fame as a
savant and a writer. He occupied his leisure time in writing books and
articles. He had participated in many naval battles and many battles of
ideas. The list of the titles of his books shows to how many countries
he had traveled in the performance of his duties, and also how manifold
were the regions which he had explored as a poet and thinker: “Gaul and
the Gauls,” “The Enigma of Nature,” “Across the Unknown,” “The Voices of
the Rocks,” “Journey Around the World,” “Seeds and Embryos,” “Against
Storm and Flood,” “The Three Promontories,” “Letters of a Mariner,”
“Tales and Stories,” “The Indian Seas,” “The Chinese Seas,” “The
Conquest of the Ocean,” “The Search for the Ideal”; still later came
“United Europe” (Paris, Berger Levraut, 1896), “Guardianship and
Anarchy” (Ibid., 1896), “Extension, Expansion” (Ibid., 1898).
He wrote me once how it happened that he, the son of conservative
Brittany, grown gray in the naval service, had joined the pacifists:
Often we are inspired by two ideas which have no apparent connection,
and it sometimes takes years before the bond that connects them is
discovered. It has cost me much time and thought to explain the
connection between the two ruling passions which possess me and which
had seemed to me to have no relationship with each other,—a
deep-seated enthusiasm for the federation of Europe, and an
instinctive cult for dolmens and menhirs.
From my earliest childhood I have been fascinated by the riddle that
is presented in stone on all sides in my Breton homeland; and ever
since my childhood I have been in love with the beautiful dream of a
European federation,—a dream which is bound to come true in spite of
the prejudices of statesmen and the prepossessions of crowned heads.
The great work of the European alliance must begin with the
_rapprochement_ of those nations whose customs and ideas have the
closest analogy. The nations living along the Atlantic coast have been
the only ones to assimilate the principles of the French Revolution: I
mean the following countries: Scandinavia, Holland, Belgium, France,
Portugal, and ancient Helvetia, the oldest of the European republics.
England had, long since, already passed through her revolution.
Later my archæological studies taught me that this was the very region
of the dolmens. All these nations had common ancestors,—the
Megalithians; from the North Cape as far as Tangiers the same race
occupied the coast; there were the same burial rites, always based on
the same articles of faith; and the result was that to me the dolmens
and menhirs came to stand as the symbols of a Western federation.
And another time:
The accident of birth made me first of all a Breton patriot. When I
emerged from the narrow egoism of childhood, my first love was
directed to Brittany. When the development of my intellect permitted
me to realize the solidarity of my little homeland with the French
fatherland, I became a French patriot. Later I learned from history
that all the nations on this side of the Rhine once formed a glorious
Federation; then I became a Gallic patriot. Still later study of the
Megalithic monuments revealed to me a new connection,—that with the
Megalithic race. As logic continued its work, I became a European
patriot; finally, a patriot of humanity. In our day national love is
an imbecile love unless it is illuminated by the love for mankind.
I have read only the three last-named works of the admiral; but he
regularly sent me the articles that he published in the journal _La
Dépêche_, in which he always took a consistent attitude—that of
“illuminating” love for mankind—toward all the questions of the day;
not, however, in the least in a visionary way, nor with any smack of
mysticism, which so constantly stirs the spiritual lives of poetically
inclined seafarers. He based his political ideals on actual and positive
considerations, drawn particularly from the domain of national economy.
Thus he wrote:
In order to meet the industrial rivalry of the United States of
America and the yellow races, it would be desirable—in the interest of
France and Germany—to see a customs union formed, embracing Germany,
Belgium, Holland, and France, and including, at the same time, the
colonies of these countries. It really seems almost impossible at the
present time to swim against the stream of protective tariffs, and yet
every nation is conscious of the necessity of extending its market. If
there is opposition to this extension on European soil, why is not an
effort made to gain it through a colonial union,—a union by means of
which the federated countries might insure to their citizens, their
vessels, and their products the same rights and privileges in all the
colonies?
With regard to the lot of the masses, which so greatly needs to be
improved, Réveillère says that this amelioration depends on the general
production of useful articles. As long as the masses are wasting their
energies in unproductive labors there is no alleviation possible for
them, ... and at the present time the nations are wearing themselves out
in unproductive and destructive labor. There is no halfway measure;
either international anarchy (that is to say, the lack of a code of laws
regulating the intercourse of nations), with poverty, or federation,
with wealth.
My Breton friend was inclined not to mince words in speaking of the
politicians: “Steam has changed everything in this world except the
routine of our statesmen!” And in the following letter:
Engineers and scholars are all the time at work filling up the graves
which the professionals in statecraft are digging; the engineers are
expending all their energies in increasing the productivity of labor,
the politicians are doing everything they possibly can to make it
sterile.
Many persons are of the opinion that the end sought is too broad and
distant, and the initiation of it is beset with too great difficulties,
to be willing to attempt the regulation of a pacific mutual relationship
among the European states; especially at the present time, when almost
every state has to endure so much trouble and disturbance arising from
the violent national and social battles which are raging within its own
borders. An answer to this objection is afforded by the following
passage from one of Réveillère’s books (“Extension, Expansion,” p. 23):
When a physician has to treat a case of consumption, his first care is
to prevent his patient from breathing poisoned air. If he has to
perform an operation, he sees to it that the room in which the
operation is to take place is purified of every contagious germ.
Exactly the same principle holds with regard to national diseases. No
state can think of curing its internal ills before the European room
is disinfected. Certainly it is the duty of every nation to do
everything possible to modify the ills of its own people; but to claim
that serious internal reforms can be carried out without having first
secured European federation is just like caring for wounded men in a
hall filled with microbes.
I kept up a correspondence with Admiral Réveillère for a long time. Of
late years our letters fell off in frequency. A short time ago—in March,
1908—he died. Ah, when we have grown old, how often we have to report of
our friends that they are no more! In childhood life is like a nursery;
in youth, like a garden; in old age, like a cemetery.
Tidings of a death which affected us painfully—I am now telling of what
happened in the year 1895—came to us suddenly from the Caucasus,—Prince
Achille Murat had shot himself. Was it suicide or an accident? I never
learned the exact truth. It happened in Zugdidi, in the villa which My
Own had built for the Murats. Princess Salomé, who was sitting in the
next room, heard the report of a shot in her husband’s room. She
hastened in and found the unfortunate man fallen back in an easy-chair,
with a pistol between his legs, the barrel pointing up in the air. Had
he been cleaning the weapon carelessly, or was it weariness of life? As
I said, I do not know.
And still another loss: On the 17th of October, 1895, Duke Elimar von
Oldenburg departed this life, in his fifty-second year, at his castle of
Erlaa. A short time before, he had given me a second article by his
uncle, Prince Peter, entitled “Thoughts of a Russian Patriot,” which
ends with these ringing words:
Let me be permitted to express the dearest wish of my heart, as I face
God and Eternity,—an agreement of all governments in the interest of
peace and humanity! May that happy day dawn when men can say, War
between civilized nations is at an end.
Duke Elimar’s widow was completely overwhelmed by this sudden and
premature bereavement. To my letter of condolence she wrote me the
following answer, which throws a brilliant light on the noble
characteristics of the departed and his consort:
Brogan, October 29, 1895
Dear Baroness:
Most hearty thanks for your warm, sympathetic words, and also for the
splendid wreath sent by the Society of the Friends of Peace, which,
with so many other gifts of love and tokens of respect, adorns the
last resting-place of the deceased. There is _no_ consolation for such
hours. What I have lost no one can truly realize who does not know how
the inner bond that united us, joining every fiber of our two lives
together, had been interwoven in the nineteen years of undivided,
untroubled wedlock, so that with the uprooting of one life the
thousands and thousands of roots of the other were torn from the
ground. The profound loneliness which has come upon me through this
loss is often scarcely to be endured, and at the present time I can
hardly imagine how in this life, on this earth, I can ever again take
root. One who has lived for nineteen years in such intimate
relationship with a man like my husband cannot easily become
accustomed to other persons.
The pure, lofty idealism which—I may say—formed the very quintessence
of his being and made him so extremely lovable, so winning, and so
attractive to all who came into contact with him, I shall never again
find anywhere so embodied as in him, and since he has gone from me I
miss him always everywhere to such a degree that it is often simply
unendurable for me to be with others. And yet the proofs of
_unofficial_, genuine, heartfelt sympathy from so many good and noble
people in these days has done me unspeakable good. To you also, my
dear Baroness, my best and heartiest thanks once again for all your
sympathy.
Your sincerely devoted
Natalie von Oldenburg
A few years later she sent me a volume of poems dedicated to the memory
of the departed and breathing a pathetic grief.
And yet a third loss: On the 31st of October, 1895, Ruggero Bonghi, so
beloved in our circle, died in Torre del Greco at the age of
sixty-eight. Italy mourned in him the reformer of public education, the
professor of philosophy, the editor of the _Nuova Antologia_, the
founder and director of the orphan asylum at Anagni; we mourned the
active apostle of our common cause, the man who from a lofty tribune had
spoken these beautiful words: “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_.” Our Austrian Union
telegraphed the following words to Rome for the funeral: _Sincero dolore
e riconoscenza eterna_. “Sincere grief and eternal gratitude.”
XLVII
FURTHER VARIED RECOLLECTIONS
The Union for Resistance to Anti-Semitism once more · Article by A. G.
von Suttner · In the house of Christian Kinsky · Recollection of a home
dinner with the Empress · War between Japan and China · Appeal of the
Peace Congress to the Powers for intervention · Answer of the Russian
Minister of War, Giers · The fruits of German military instruction in
Japan · The Peace of Shimonoseki · Interparliamentary Conference in
Brussels · Sending out the formulated and accepted plan for an
arbitration tribunal · First appearance of the Hungarian Group, with
Maurus Jókai and Count Apponyi at its head · Hopeful and distressful
signs of the times · From the Congress of the Association Littéraire in
Dresden · Trip to Prague · At Professor Jodl’s · Lecture in “The German
House” · Banquet · La Busca · Visit at Vrchlicky’s · Trip to Budapest ·
Founding of the Hungarian Peace Society · War in sight between England
and the United States · Removal of the danger
This year—I am still speaking of 1895, as I turn the leaves of the
volume containing my diary for that period—we did not make any journey
to a Peace Congress, for the simple reason that no Congress was held.
But we did not on that account spend the whole year at Harmannsdorf.
Trips were made to Prague, to Budapest (with lectures), to
Lussinpiccolo, which I will describe later on; and we visited Vienna a
number of times, whither we were called by duty and pleasure.
The business of his Union caused My Own much labor and much anxiety.
Anti-Semitism, against which he was waging battle, had increased rather
than diminished in violence. Dr. Karl Lueger, a leader in the
Anti-Semitic party, had been nominated and elected by that party as
mayor; but the Emperor did not confirm the election, to the indignation
of a large part of the bourgeoisie and to the consternation of those
higher circles who, under the influence of their spiritual advisers,
supported the candidature of Karl Lueger.