days of my life, henceforth to be lonely, so inexpressibly lonely....
On the tenth, after an hour of agony, and after he had called me by
name, My Own, My very Own, breathed away his precious life!
Maria Louise, Sister Luise, Pauline, the two physicians, and I stood
about his deathbed—endlessly sad and tragic hours....
Have lost everything!
Then followed the days and nights of the deathwatch.
So lovely he lay there with his own characteristic smile on his cold,
ice-cold lips, which I could not kiss often enough....
On the thirteenth solemn service for the dead; the weeping inmates of
the house and the villagers; the mourning guests. We accompanied the
coffin to Eggenburg.
On the fourteenth the journey to Gotha.
On the sixteenth the flaming pyre!
During his lifetime he whom I lost said to me many dear and beautiful
words, which are imprinted on my heart; but the loveliest are those
which he spoke from beyond the grave, in his last will. After a few last
instructions and directions it reads:
And now, My Own, one single word to thee: Thanks! Thou hast made me
happy; thou hast helped me to win from life its loveliest aspects, to
get delight from it. Not a second of discontent has ever come between
us, and for this I thank thy great understanding, thy great heart, thy
great love!...
Thou knowest that we realized within our hearts the duty of
contributing our mite to the betterment of the world, of laboring, of
struggling for the right, for the imperishable light of the truth.
Though I go home, for you this duty is not extinguished. Thy happy
recollection of thy companion must be a support to thee. Thou must
work on in our plans, for the sake of the good cause keep up the work
until thou also at last shalt reach the end of the brief journey of
life. Courage then! No hesitation! In what we are trying to do we are
at one, and therefore must thou try still to accomplish much!
CONCLUSION
I am going to break off these records of my life at this point; I cannot
call that which has filled my days between the tenth of December, 1902,
and the present time, life. To be sure, I heeded the injunction which
came to me from beyond the grave, and I have worked on; and I have seen
in the loom of time much of that red woof to which my thoughts and
desires are directed. I shall go on to speak further of that, but not in
connection with the other personal things commemorated here. Moreover,
the events of the last few years are still too near at hand to furnish a
satisfactory perspective.
Since my career, however, does not end with that date of sorrow—since I
have not yet reached, as the will says, “the end of the brief journey of
life,” I shall have much more to communicate concerning the further
course of that movement in which I have found my life task.
In the last six years important phases have developed in the battle
between the cause of peace and the cause of war: for instance, the
Anglo-French _entente_; the series of arbitration treaties following
one after another (some among them without the usual limitations); the
outbreak and fearful catastrophes of the Russo-Japanese war; the Hull
incident, which, through the application of an investigation
commission instituted by the Hague Court, was prevented from
developing into a world conflagration; Roosevelt’s action in restoring
peace in eastern Asia; the entrance of the North American group into
the Interparliamentary Union; the rising cloud between England and
Germany; its dissipation through the exchange of visits of
international corporations brought about by the pacifists; the further
assignments of the Nobel prizes; the activity and expenditures of
Andrew Carnegie for peace purposes; the peaceful separation of Sweden
and Norway, the first example of the kind in history; the lessons of
the Russian revolution; the recent proposal of the English premier,
Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, for a union to limit armaments; the
calling of the Second Hague Peace Conference; the Interparliamentary
Conference at London, at which, for the first time, members of the
Russian duma participated, though on account of the dissolution of the
duma they were obliged to withdraw (_La douma est morte, vive la
douma!_); the labors and congress of the Universal Alliance of Women
for Peace and Arbitration under the chairmanship of Lady Aberdeen; the
Second Hague Peace Congress, this time including representatives of
forty-six countries, with the wedge still further driven in by
doubters and opponents determined to change the character of this
world parliament so that it shall come to be merely a court to
regulate wars; the favorable results, nevertheless, of this Conference
resulting from the spirit of the cause and promoted by our adherents
who were present; the brilliant début of the South American countries
which were represented in it; the determination to continue this
international coöperation; the progress of the anti-dueling movement
assisted by the King of Spain and the King of Italy; the resolutions
passed by the socialist congresses in favor of fighting against war;
the increasing number of _ententes_, in which the adherents of the old
views, and with them the press of almost the entire world, suspect
that they can see aggressive alliances formed against third parties,
but which in reality are merely new meshes of the net making for the
peaceful organization of the world; the conquest of the air, the most
revolutionary event of recent centuries in the development of
civilization, but in which the shortsighted see nothing else than a
useful means of hurling explosives, although it really involves the
abolition of boundaries, fortifications, and customhouses; at the same
time the conditions in the miserable Balkan states, where for long
years brigandage and manslaughter and atrocities have been raging and
the war storm may break at any moment.
I have not held myself aloof from all these things; I have chronicled
them in my diaries with notes, documents, and correspondence. During
these last six years I have been about the world a good deal and met
many interesting people. For four winters in succession I have spent
several weeks as the guest of the Prince of Monaco in his crag-seated
castle, and have there met prominent personages from princely,
scientific, diplomatic, and artistic circles. A journey to America[49]
brought me into touch with Roosevelt, and opened before me vistas into
that country of unbounded possibilities, or, rather, as it presented
itself to me, of impossibilities overcome. I have participated in the
meetings of congresses during that time, namely, the Peace Congresses at
Boston, Lucerne, Milan, and Munich, and the Woman’s Congress at Berlin.
I attended as a guest the Interparliamentary Conferences at Vienna and
London. I have had frequent meetings with my old colleagues, and I have
seen new laborers in the common cause come to the fore: for instance,
Richard Bartholdt, founder of the American group; Sir Thomas Barclay,
the zealous associate promoter of the Anglo-French _entente_; Lubin, the
initiator of the Agricultural Institute at Rome; and Bryan, the
candidate for President of the United States. I have been enabled to
follow the great services rendered the peace movement in Germany by
Pastor Umfrid, by Professor Quidde, and by many others—I cannot name
them all. In the year 1905, accompanied by Miss Alice Williams, I made a
lecture tour through twenty-eight German cities. In the spring of 1906 I
had to go to Christiania to deliver there before King Haakon and the
Storthing the lecture required of the recipients of the Nobel prizes. At
that time I made a journey through Sweden and Denmark. Finally, in 1907,
just as eight years earlier, I was present at The Hague during the time
of the Peace Conference, and kept an exact record of all the
transactions, personages, and social functions. All these experiences,
impressions, letters, and memoranda may sometime come into use for
supplementing the reminiscences (so far as they bear upon the historic
development of the peace movement) which are here brought to a
conclusion; and, should I not myself arrange for their publication, they
will be found among my possessions after I am gone.
What the immediate future will produce in this domain will assuredly
surpass in significance the modest and hidden beginnings. Though the
contemporary world is quite unconscious of the fact, the movement has
spread far beyond the circle of the Unions, of the resolutions, and of
the personal activities of single individuals; it has grown into a
struggle which involves the very conception of life and all natural
laws. It has passed from the hands of the so-called “Apostles” into the
hands of the powerful and into the minds of the awaking democracy;
within it work a hundredfold various powers, unconscious that they are
thus working. It is a process which is being accomplished by the forces
of nature, a slowly growing new organization of the world. The next
stage is to be something quite concrete, perfectly attainable, absolved
from all theoretical and all ethical universality,—the formation of an
alliance of European states.
Whatever the old system may accomplish by its endeavors, however
insanely high the supplies of the opposing instruments of destruction
may be heaped up, whatever horrors may break out in isolated places in
the way of warlike reactions, I have no fear of being discredited in
histories written in the future when I here register the prediction,
Universal peace is on the way.
And even if to-day many look askance at these prophecies, and turn from
the whole cause,—indifferent, yawning, shrugging their shoulders, as if
it concerned something impractical, unessential, fanciful,—yet very
speedily, if once that which is in preparation, as yet silent and
unobserved, comes into sight, there will be awakened the general
realization that this cause demands conscious coöperation, that it
includes the mightiest task of onward-marching human society,—in a word,
that it is “the one important thing.”
July, 1908
SUPPLEMENTARY CHAPTER
1904
THREE WEEKS IN AMERICA
The Bremen Rathauskeller · The Emperor’s beaker · A peaceful voyage · A
ship on fire · A curious contradiction · The Statue of Liberty · Tariff
vandals · The first interviewers · First impression of New York · Old
comrades · The “yellow press” · The Interparliamentary Conference ·
Secretary Hay’s address · Public meetings · Russia and Japan shake hands
· A Chinese lady · The Boston Public Library · Sojourn in New York · The
“smart set” · Carl Schurz · The Waldorf-Astoria · The worship of bigness
· At the Pulitzers’ · The _World_ · Philadelphia · Fairmount Park · Two
days in Washington · A conversation with Roosevelt · “Universal peace is
coming” · A peace meeting at Cincinnati · Niagara Falls · An advertising
monstrosity · A visit in Ithaca
For the English-American edition of this book I will add a few
reminiscences of my visit to the United States as I committed them to
paper in October, 1904, while returning to Europe.
Here on board the _Kaiser Wilhelm II_ I find time and leisure to set
down in my diary some of the multitudinous and vivid impressions whereby
the store of my experiences has been increased through my brief, all too
brief, sojourn on the other side of the ocean.
The thirteenth World’s Peace Congress was opened in Boston on the fourth
of September. That was the object of my journey; so I was not induced to
cross the ocean by my desire to make acquaintance with the New World,
and yet a wholly and completely new world was revealed to me.
I will begin at the embarkation. My traveling companion and I spent the
evening before in the senators’ room of the Rathauskeller at Bremen,
where the local group of the German Peace Society had arranged a small
festivity in our honor.
I saw there the enormous hogshead which holds ever so many gallons, and
the one that is filled with such precious old wine that every drop is
reckoned as worth so many hundred marks, and the beaker from which
Emperor William II is accustomed to drink when he visits the wine
cellar, and—what pleased me most—the model of the fountain on which the
quaint city musicians of Bremen are portrayed, namely, the ass on which
stands the dog which supports the cat on which sits the cock,—possibly
very clever, but certainly extremely lean, tone artists.
The next morning, which was bright and clear, we proceeded to
Bremerhaven by a special train. This train takes transatlantic
passengers only, and stops directly opposite the gangway of the
steamship. When we arrived at the dock, gay music was pealing from the
deck, and we went on board as if we were embarking for a pleasure sail.
After a brief hour’s delay our floating palace, _Kaiser Wilhelm der
Grosse_, gets under way. The receding rim of the harbor is filled with
people still waving their farewells, and the travelers on the decks are
also waving in response. At the same time the ship’s orchestra has begun
to play again. It is a melancholy moment, although the soul is raised on
high with expectation as we sail out over the broad ocean into another
portion of the world, into the land of unlimited possibilities, and away
from the old home, perhaps never to be seen again. What thoughts fill
the emigrant’s soul? Experienced globe-trotters, who cross the great
pond every year, may be as calm and cool at this moment as we are when
we hear the signal for the starting of the train from Mödling Station to
Vienna; but I, who was making my first trip across the Atlantic,
experienced something of the solemnity of a parting mood, although I
left nothing behind save an urn of ashes!
It was a beautiful, smooth passage, with only two or three hours of
pitching and discomfort during the whole voyage, which was free from fog
and storm. We had a very agreeable captain,—I had the privilege of
sitting at his right hand at dinner,—and also very interesting traveling
companions. Ah! and this beneficial state of emancipation from the woes
and the worries of the day, and no newspaper with descriptions from the
theater of war. Fortunately the Marconi system is not sufficiently
advanced to give us daily tidings in full detail. That is destined to
come about, but it is to be hoped that the news then will contain fewer
barbarities. Ultimately the moral improvement of the world must keep
step with the technical.
We went through a half hour of anxious excitement on the high seas. We
were sitting comfortably on deck, reclining in our steamer chairs,
engaged in reading or contemplation of the play of the waves, or lazily
thinking of nothing at all, when suddenly a commotion began on board.
There was a clamor of voices, and sailors ran hither and thither. The
travelers rushed to one place on the quarter-deck.
“It is sinking!” cries one.
“What is sinking?” I inquire, with pardonable interest; “our ship?”
“No—do you see—yonder—”
Now I, too, hasten to the rail; I see at some distance a sailing vessel,
a three-master, rocking on the waves. It is on fire; our ship hastens
toward her under full steam. Possibly there may be something there to be
rescued,—even human beings raising agonized prayers for aid.
That was not the case; the vessel was a derelict. But if there had been
men on board, how we should have trembled, how anxiously we should have
followed the work of rescue that our captain would have set on foot with
all zeal, and how we should have clamored with jubilation had he
succeeded. Even if there had been no more than one man on board the
unfortunate craft, and he had been rescued from the extremity of
despair, what joy! But when the next Marconi dispatch brings the news of
a bath of blood at Port Arthur or Mukden,—that is merely an interesting
piece of news! What an insane contradiction! In regard to this I will
only say that such things must cease, for contradictions cannot prevail;
they annihilate themselves; that is the law of nature. The time will
come when the sacred sea, that binds all nations together, that
distributes wealth among them, that has been made serviceable through
the powers of man for the aims of happiness, will be no longer
desecrated by explosive mines and submarine instruments of destruction.
On the seventh day we entered the harbor of New York; the Statue of
Liberty held out her torch to greet us,—a torch so great that a man can
take a walk around its handle. But grand and triumphant as the statue
is, its ideal falls below it even in America, which in the national hymn
arrogates to itself the proud title, “Land of the noble free.” If ever
there was a dream projected into the future, it is the dream of freedom,
up to the present time unfulfilled everywhere, yet ripening toward
fulfillment. Perhaps America, the young land unoppressed by ancient
traditional fetters, is the land where that torch will first flame forth
and then illuminate all the corners of the earth.
I had, by the way, my first taste of its lack of freedom, at the dock,
where the vandals of the tariff rummaged in the depths of my trunks and
subjected my fur cloak to a searching examination. Heaven be praised, it
was not sealskin! And while I was trembling with the excitement of the
inspection, three reporters were asking me about the programme of the
Peace Congress and about the prospects of the war in eastern Asia.
“Who will win, Russia or Japan?”
“Both will lose,” I replied, opening a trunk—(to the customs officer)
“Only old clothes!”—(to the reporters) “Both will lose, and mankind with
them.”
We proceeded directly to Boston, and, as night had already come on, the
first impression of New York, which we crossed from Hoboken to the
Forty-second Street Station, was only one mad whirl of dazzling lights,
roaring streets, and houses high as the sky!
Boston has the reputation of being the most European city in the United
States, and likewise the capital of intellect. Really I have not much to
offer in the way of descriptions and observations; Boston for me was the
gathering place of this year’s Peace Congress, and as such absorbed all
my thoughts and attention. Here I was, then, once more in another
quarter of the world, and just as at Rome and Budapest, as in Hamburg
and Paris, among good old comrades; once more I was on the international
forum, where the ideal of international friendship, with its promise of
happiness, is practiced among the participants and is striven for in
behalf of contemporary and succeeding generations.
The sessions of the American Peace Congress showed clearly enough what
immense strides the peace movement has recently made, in spite of, or
perhaps because of, the awful wholesale slaughter in eastern Asia, which
arouses universal horror. The conviction that this matter is not only
one of the weightiest questions of the time, but is the question of the
future, and is the foundation on which a new era of civilization,
already dawning, is to be erected, is penetrating into ever wider and
wider circles, and is already forming in America a consistent part of
public opinion, as was well shown by the course of the thirteenth Peace
Congress and the interest taken in it by the people.
Of course there, as everywhere, one finds a chauvinistic tendency, a
“yellow press,” imperialistic appetites, and the like; but in
corroboration of the above-expressed opinion, that the peace question is
the predominant one in the public mind, stands the fact that in the
presidential campaign now convulsing the whole country the peace
sentiment is incorporated into the platform of the Democratic party, and
that Roosevelt’s opponents are striving to belittle, as an election
maneuver, the peace policy which he is now so energetically advocating.
The great mass of the people, and especially the more intelligent
classes of the country, are strongly opposed to an unlimited increase of
the navy, and to the spread of military institutions and of the warlike
spirit.
A remarkable land, “Land of Unlimited Possibilities,” as it has been
called in the well-known book title; verily it might rather be called
“Land of Conquered Impossibilities.” Indeed, this young world,—in the
true sense of the word, this New World,—exuberant in strength, glad in
its daring, with peculiar insistency “gets on the nerves” of people of
strong conservative feelings. But any one who looks to the future, any
one who cherishes a comforting faith in development, will here feel
joyously strengthened in his hopes of progress. Certainly all the
acquisitions of the New World will redound to the advantage of the Old
World, just as all the treasures of culture of the Old have been taken
over and will still continue to be taken over by the New. It would be
good if Europeans, eager to learn and to know, might be turned to
America, in such mighty throngs as America pours into Europe. Yes, the
nations have to learn from one another; that is better than for them to
blow one another into the air. If one man desires to climb higher than
another, he must mount on the other’s shoulders, but not throw him down.
The recent period, during which a World’s Fair and such numerous
congresses—the Interparliamentary Conference and Scientific Congress at
St. Louis, the Peace Congress in Boston, and the like—have attracted to
America so many Europeans, will do a vast amount toward widening the
knowledge and at the same time the appreciation of what we should get
from and for America.
But let us return to the peace meetings. This time I was unfortunately
unable to attend the Interparliamentary Conference. What a brilliant
success it was we shall soon know by report. The members of the
Conference were the guests of the government, and as such were specially
honored, not only by the officials but also by the inhabitants of all
the cities that they visited; and their two most important
resolutions—the calling of a second Hague Conference and the
establishment of a permanent International Congress for the discussion
of world interests—have been laid before President Roosevelt and by him
in a measure put in motion.
Who can doubt that the calling of a new Hague Conference, just as was
the case with the first, will meet with much opposition, and that
attempts will be made to belittle its significance and render nugatory
its results? Nothing great and new is ever accomplished without
opposition. But just as the first Conference, in spite of everything,
left behind it not only the fact of the tribunal established and the
text of the agreements “for the peaceful solution of international
conflicts by means of the Court of Arbitration, mediation, and
commissions for intervention,” but also the solemn declaration that the
moral and material welfare of the nations requires a reduction of the
burden of armaments, so also the next Conference will certainly bring
forth further and fresh results. Granted we have the letter of the law
already, all that is required is to breathe into it the spirit of life.
“Where there’s a will there’s a way,” says the proverb; but where the
way is all open the will must be exerted.
I obtained accurate details concerning the satisfactory proceedings of
the Interparliamentary Conference, and the reception of their delegation
at the White House, from the lips of several of its members, who, being
also members of the Peace Unions, attended the Boston Congress, of which
they brought us reports. Among them were William Randal Cremer (the last
year’s laureate of the Nobel peace prize), Dr. Clark, Houzeau de Lehaye,
and H. La Fontaine.